Brave Jo has also relived the first words she heard her husband say after the ordeal, which were, poignantly, ‘I love you.’
A mum-of-three has spoken candidly of her family’s terrifying ordeal, when her super-fit husband suffered a life-threatening stroke and had the left side of his skull removed to relieve deadly pressure on his brain.
Concerned when she could not hear the pitter-patter of their three dogs’ paws as her husband, Geoff Smith, 49 – who had been sleeping downstairs to nurse one that was sick – let them out at 6.30am on Thursday 28 March 2019, Jo Smith, 48, went to investigate.
To her horror, she found Geoff, a maintenance engineer for a large hotel chain, sat in his boxer shorts with a gash on his head, eyes rolling backwards and the right side of his face collapsed.
Family support worker Jo, of South Woodham Ferrers near Chelmsford, Essex, said: “I would normally hear the dogs’ feet on the hallway at that time, so I went downstairs and saw Geoff’s legs lying halfway through the doorway to the lounge.
“He was sat up on the floor wearing his boxer shorts, but his eyes were rolling and he wasn’t breathing well. The right side of Geoff’s face had collapsed and he had a long deep gash to the side of his head, which was bleeding so I screamed for my daughter Paige to call an ambulance while I sat with him.
“He struggled to talk and, as we waited for the ambulance, we were told to lie him down on the floor and tell the operator ‘yes’ every time he breathed.”
When the paramedics arrived, Jo – who married Geoff nine years ago after they met on Facebook and lives with him and her three children from her first marriage, Paige, 23, Josh, 20 and Georgie, 17, and their dogs, Benson, a Staffie, Reggie, a French Bulldog and Dudley, a cocker spaniel – spotted his slippers in the garden next to a dog scoop bag and tried to piece together what had happened.
She then checked his Fitbit watch, which showed her husband had been up for a whole hour before she found him.
Adding that doctors are still trying to determine the cause of the stroke, she said: “I think Geoff woke up feeling unwell, but still took the dogs outside where he fell – due to the stroke – and cut his head on a gravel border in the garden.”
She added: “Every dog had blood on it, so they had clearly licked his wound. He must have struggled back in where he undressed before he collapsed on the floor, where I found him.”
Rushed to A&E at Broomfield Hospital with Jo by his side, doctors confirmed that Geoff had suffered a a devastating hemorrhagic stroke – where a blood vessel within the skull bursts and bleeds into and around the brain, normally caused by high blood pressure.
Jo was told by doctors that they would be monitoring the brain swelling before transferring Geoff to Queen’s Hospital in Romford, Essex, which has a specialist neurology unit.
“The doctor told me, ‘He’s young and fit and stands a good chance,’ but I couldn’t believe what was happening,” said Jo.
‘I kept thinking, ‘This must be a nightmare and I am going to wake up.’ I kept asking, ‘Why me? Why Geoff? Why this beautiful person who is my soulmate?’”
Cutting short a coach holiday to Scotland and driving for 15 hours to the hospital, Jo’s parents, David Smith, 72, and Sandra Smith, 75, like her, were particularly shocked as Geoff was so fit.
He went to the gym three times a week, never smoked, had healthy blood pressure and no raised cholesterol levels.
He and Jo lived a normal family life, although Geoff had been doing a lot of overtime and she admitted they worked very hard, sometimes making them “like passing ships in the night.”
“We had no indication anything was wrong, nothing at all,” said Jo.“But when I saw him lying there, I knew what it was. We’ve all seen the adverts, we all know the signs of a stroke.”
Told by medics that the first 72 hours following a stroke were critical, Jo realised there was a real risk that Geoff might die.
“It’s so upsetting seeing someone you love lying there like that,” she added. “You don’t know whether they can see you, hear you, or understand you. You just have no idea.”
Anaesthetised for the transfer to Queen’s Hospital, Jo learned afterwards that Geoff had been given emergency resuscitation treatment and nearly did not make it.
“I didn’t go to Queen’s in the ambulance, but followed in the car with my mum and dad and Paige,” she recalled. “I just kept saying to everyone, ‘Please promise me he’ll make it.’”
Geoff was rushed straight into surgery on arrival, so that doctors could remove the left side of his skull – a procedure known as a craniectomy- which would then reduce the brain swelling.
“The surgeon told me Geoff could suffer severe speech and language difficulties, as well as physical difficulties, but I said, ‘I don’t care, just save him,’” said Jo.
The 12 days following his surgery were a rollercoaster for the whole family, with Geoff recovering on the critical care ward, where he was put back on a ventilator three times to aid his breathing, making Jo feel that for every step forwards he took three steps back.
In time though, he began to improve and they started to communicate by blinking and squeezing hands, as he was still on oxygen and could not speak.
Then, on 6 April, he was well enough to remove his oxygen mask and said his first words to Jo, which were: “I love you.”
She recalled: “That was the most incredible feeling, hearing those three words which we all throw around the place.
“I never thought he would survive. He’s the optimist in the relationship – and here he was telling me he recognised me and he loved me.”
On 11 April – Jo’s birthday – Geoff was finally moved from the hospital’s critical unit to the acute ward, where he spent the next six days slowly recovering from his stroke and being switched from tube feeding to soft foods.
“He was quite weak still, but he could speak and even sing and it was such a relief he was off the critical ward,” said Jo.
Huge fans of Ant Middleton, the chief instructor on the TV show SAS: Who Dares Wins, they had been due to see him at a local event on 9 April, but Geoff’s stroke meant they had to sell their tickets.
Someone told Ant what had happened and, to Geoff’s delight, the star sent him a video message, encouraging him to “keep on fighting.”
“It was one of the highlights of his recovery,” said Jo.
Now back at his local hospital, the Broomfield, around 16 miles from their house, Geoff is improving every day and is due to be assessed at east London’s Homerton University Hospital in Hackney, which specialises in neurological rehabilitation.
“Getting a bed there is like winning a golden ticket, so I’m praying Geoff can start his rehabilitation soon,” said Jo. “It’s what he needs. He’s bored and fed up and as soon as he is medically stable, we’re hoping rehabilitation can start, even if it’s at another local hospital.”
In the meantime, Jo has launched a GoFundMe page to raise money to help finance both Geoff’s rehabilitation, post hospital, and to help keep the family afloat financially.
“I’m going to effectively be a single parent for the foreseeable future,” she said. “We’ve never lived beyond our means, but we have a mortgage to pay and if I want the best treatment for Geoff, including alternative and other specialist therapies, I am going to have to find the money for that.
“I did feel a bit like begging at first and I almost wanted not to push the button to go live with my GoFundMe page, but I am like a dog with a bone, trying to get him well.
“When you love someone this much, you fight their corner. Geoff will be Geoff again and he will walk through that door, come hell or high water.”
Also, while Jo accepts that Geoff may not be able to go back to his old job, she is determined that he will be well enough one day for them to fulfil another dream.
She explained: “We’ve always talked about running a kennels or a cattery together and got quite close to doing that a while ago, but we couldn’t make the money work and decided it wasn’t the right time, so we put it on hold.
“There’s a cattery in Lincolnshire in the countryside that I’ve seen that I know would be perfect for us.”
She added: “And I don’t believe what the doctors say, that stroke patients reach their maximum recovery in two years, because other people who have had a stroke, and their families, say differently.
“Now all I want is for Geoff is to have the chance of the best recovery possible and I am not giving up on that, or on us making our dreams come true.”
For more information about Jo’s fundraising see www.gofundme.com/geoff039s-journey
