A British man who moved to Australia just weeks ago faces being forced to return to the UK after he suffered a catastrophic stroke.
Liam Rudd, 30, and his 28-year-old girlfriend Stella Slinger Thompson were looking forward to starting a new life on the Gold Coast.
However, their shared ‘dream’ of living Down Under quickly spun into a nightmare after Mr Rudd suffered a stroke in the shower on Sunday, November 11.
This left him paralysed on the bathroom floor where Ms Slinger Thompson discovered him.
After being rushed to the hospital, Mr Rudd had two rounds of emergency surgery to remove blood clots in his brain and soon afterwards he was put in an induced coma.
He had been just days away from starting a new job as a fleet mechanic.
Despite a gofundme page raising thousands to support his recovery, the couple are being forced to cut their time short and return to the UK because the cost of rehabilitation in Australia is too costly.
Although the cause of the stroke has not been determined, doctors believe it may have been caused by a benign tumour called a fibroelastoma that may develop on the heart valves.
The British national is optimistic that he will eventually be able to return to Australia, even though his recuperation may take up to a year and a half.
The Brit, who will be moving back to Guildford, Surrey, said: ‘It was a huge shock. I don’t remember too much from the lead-up. I didn’t feel any symptoms coming on.
‘I just remember having the stroke and being paralysed on the floor and scrambling and trying to pull myself up but being unable to.
‘I was due to start a new job as a fleet mechanic for a fleet engineering company. I love work so I was disappointed. But at the same time, there was nothing I could do to change anything so you have to embrace it.
‘My plan is to go back to the UK to undergo intensive rehabilitation and then come back to Australia anyway. That’s still an open opportunity.
‘I’m very fortunate. My employer’s been very understanding. I don’t think the opportunity is lost.
‘The doctors expect a full recovery but it’s a long road ahead and will take an incredible amount of work to get to. You have to keep the mind strong.’
Ms Slinger Thompson, who works as an advertising producer and is from Brighton, East Sussex, was due to meet her boyfriend for lunch with friends on Sunday 11 November and became concerned when he wasn’t answering his phone.
Thinking he had suffered a concussion, she summoned an ambulance after discovering him lying on the bathroom floor.
She said: ‘It was insane. Even now I don’t think I’ve come to terms with it. This is a living nightmare.
‘He was late picking me up. Usually, he is a bit late so I didn’t think much of it. But I was calling him for over an hour. I would call then it would ring and it would pick up and decline.
‘I thought ‘this is odd’. Then finally after an hour, he picked up. He wasn’t making any sense. All I could make out was him saying ‘help’. So I rushed round and also called three of his friends.
‘We arrived and found him on the bathroom floor. He’d had a shower clearly and fainted or hit his head. He was tapping his head and tapping the floor to communicate to us that he’d fallen.
‘I called the ambulance. They gave me a note to put him in a recovery position. Because he’d been throwing up, we all at the time thought he had a really bad concussion. We didn’t realise at that point what it was.’
Doctors discovered that Mr Rudd had suffered a stroke and required emergency surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain after he became unresponsive on his left side and arrived at the hospital.
However, during surgery, doctors discovered a second blood clot that was too ‘high risk’ to work on immediately and he had to have a second surgery the following day.
Ms Slinger Thompson said: ‘Once we got to the hospital they rushed him into a surgery where they do an incision in the groin to retrieve any kind of blood clot.
‘It usually should take an hour but it took eight hours because they found another blood clot that was too high risk to operate on. The first blood clot they operated on and tried to retrieve as much as they could.
‘They called his mum and dad and explained it. Then they did the six-hour emergency surgery. They cut his skull to relieve any pressure in his brain. They felt like it went well. It was all about trying to save his life.
‘The second surgery was a pretty sleepless night. It’s been pretty bleak.
‘From then he was in a coma. They started to take him off sedation three days later. He slowly came out of the coma and came off all the tubes.’
The mechanic is now being seen five times a day by doctors in a stroke ward and his partner visits him every day.
The UK and Australia have a reciprocal arrangement that covers Mr Rudd’s emergency medical costs, but it does not pay for his rehabilitation because he is not an Australian citizen and does not have sponsorship.
She said: ‘He’s in the stroke ward currently but as soon as he’s moved to the rehab ward that’s when the costs will start coming.
‘Because he’s not a citizen or got a sponsorship yet, from the rehab stage it would become very costly and a financial burden to the point where it’s £8,000 a week.
‘They’ve advised that the best-case scenario is for us to go to the UK and get the rehab he needs back home where it is free because of the amazing NHS.
‘We don’t know what’s going to happen. He could be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Who knows at this stage? It’s a lot of living in limbo and trying to stay positive but not really knowing anything.’
Ms Slinger Thompson has set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds so they can both travel business class to get Liam safely back home and begin the intensive rehabilitation process. So far it has risen over £31,000.
She said: ‘[The support has] been overwhelming. When we first launched it within 12 hours it was on £12,000. He, for the first time, got emotional and actually cried because he was so overwhelmed by the love and support he’s had.
‘[Doctors] said in the meeting that he needs to fly business class. They need someone with him so I’m going to come back home as well.’
The girlfriend admitted Mr Rudd has ‘always wanted’ to live in Australia and it became their shared ‘dream’ and she hopes he will be able to return in the future.
She said: ‘It’s so unlucky. He moved out here and was about to start a new job. He’s always wanted to go to Australia since the first day I met him. He’s always talked about it.
‘We were like ‘Right, let’s save up money and go out to Australia. Coming here we’ve made such a good group of friends. He was so excited about this new job and the offer of sponsorship.
‘Staying here full time was the ultimate dream for him, and for us. It’s been unfortunate. We hope we can get him well enough to come back out here and continue his dream.’
Mr Rudd’s mother, Mandy Mayhew, an estate agent who lives in Hayling Island, Hampshire, flew out to Australia for two weeks to be with her son once she heard the news.
She said: ‘I’ve never cried so much in my life. It was such a shock to everyone. They don’t know how it happened. They don’t know why it happened. He is super fit and he eats really clean.
‘He’s a real warrior. From what we thought would be the first outcome which would be he was brain dead on his right-hand side and completely paralysed on the left-hand side to how he is now is extraordinary four weeks later. A long way to go but obviously extraordinary.
‘How cruel is that? Apart from doing a degree which is hard and an engineering degree is very hard, he’s also been fixing people’s cars. He burns the candle at 100 ends. He spreads himself very thin. I said ‘That made you stop didn’t it’.
‘He bl**dy does not want to come back but realises he has to. I don’t know what his future plans and dreams are. I really hope he goes back to where he wants to be.’
To be fair he will be extremely lucky if he can get a visa to return to Australia with his medical history now, and numerous ex-pats see their way back to the UK to use the NHS when they require medical care.
The grass is always greener until something happens, but this guy hardly planned on having a stroke. He should have still taken out health insurance in case he got sick.
It was an unfortunate beginning in a new country, but he was young and intended to work and integrate – tragic, but now he should prioritise his health.
This is tragic – a great life in a new country is now ruined. I hope he recuperates quickly – be kind people out there!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 