So uh. Yeah. A couple weeks ago I had an amazing opportunity to attend a three day scientific workshop in Shanghai, China. The first two days were fantastic. On the third day I had a stroke and was found mid-morning by my colleagues, then taken by paramedics to a local hospital before being transferred on to a neuro ICU where I spent the next week and a half being medicated and investigated before I was finally cleared for travel. A UK doctor provided by my travel insurance company escorted me home where I've been recovering since, surrounded by family. All things being equal I've been spectacularly lucky and am recovering very well, with the strongest lingering effects being fatigue (probably as much due to drug side effects and my time in the ICU as the stroke itself) and occasional slurred speech and fuzzyheadedness when tired which I think are slowly getting better. I'm stable, on medication, and waiting on a referral to go through so I can start being investigated by a UK-based neurology team to continue trying to figure out why I, as a 36-year-old in more or less perfect health, had a stroke. It's probably related mostly to the really long flight from London to Shanghai allowing a clot to form but they haven't found any damage in my heart, which often facilitates clots like that making their way to the brain. So there are some unanswered questions that I'd really like to answer before I (or my family) really feel comfy with me doing much more travelling.

But I'm home and I'm safe and that's the important stuff. For anybody who's interested in more of the details of my little adventure, including the really awesome bits before things took their turn for the worse, I've posted a big thread on my Twitter account with photos that you should be able to view whether you use Twitter or not: https://twitter.com/Doran_Eirok/status/1041458010927845376