Portsmouth mum-of-two who became suicidal after stroke due to lack of rehabilitation urges government to improve services

Elizabeth Printer, from Portsmouth, had a brain haemorrhage and stroke in 2011 but, after surviving emergency brain surgery, a two-week coma and paralysis, she was discharged by the community rehab team after just three weeks.

Suffering from 65 per cent blindness in both eyes, chronic fatigue and bladder dysfunction, she retired on medical grounds, after feeling unsupported during her phased return to her work as a lawyer. She then became suicidal.

In 2017, unemployed and depressed, she paid for private healthcare to improve her wellbeing.

The 54-year-old said: ‘The NHS saved my life in an emergency, but then failed to help me recover any of the life I once had. It made life almost unbearable. I had to teach myself to walk again - I wanted to get well for my daughters, but there was no support or guidance about how I could do this.

‘I just needed to have the right rehab, treatment, and love and care, but it was never there.’

A film of Elizabeth’s story was shown in parliament in a bid to convince MPs to improve ongoing care outside of hospitals for people with long-term health conditions.

Elizabeth said: ‘I had felt completely alone, completely abandoned.

‘I know now if I had had the right help and rehab from the start that I would have been able to get back to work, and would not have endured eight years when I often thought that it would be better to be dead than carry on.’

A report published by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP), Royal College of Occupational Therapists and charity Sue Ryder, asks MPs to ensure the NHS delivers on patients’ right to rehabilitation.

It warned that failing to provide these services can have devastating consequences for people’s lives, and bring greater costs for the NHS and social care services.

The CSP’s chief executive, Karen Middleton, said: ‘Everyone should get the rehab they need to live life to the full and be as independent as possible.

‘It is essential that in the next decade we witness a radical transformation in provision to ensure no-one misses out. It’s not acceptable that we are missing opportunities to improve lives.’