BRENDA Warner had no idea why she was in hospital.

She didn’t know anyone around her – not the people who said they were doctors and nurses, not even the ones who said they were her husband and children.

She didn’t know who she was either.

For around four weeks she lived in this world, which she describes as being like waking up from a dream. She functioned moment to moment, accepting what was happening to her, but not fully understanding it.

Brenda, then 55, had had a stroke.

It was the latest in a catastrophic chain of events that started when she found a lump in her breast one morning in 2003.

She saw her GP the same day and the lump – which was cancerous – was removed within three weeks.

She was then placed on a course of chemotherapy. The treatment was fighting the cancer but left her so dehydrated and weak that she had to be admitted to hospital.

She was rehydrated with a saline drip but her immune system was weak and she contracted encephalitis – a brain virus – and had a massive stroke.

Brenda, who lives in Millbrook, Southampton, still remembers the first moment of recognition she felt after her stroke. It happened when an old friend suggested they get out of hospital and go for a beer!

She didn’t know her friend’s name but she knew she knew him.

“It was something about beer!” laughs Brenda, whose cancer didn’t return.

It was the first step on a long road to recovery that has lasted ten years.

Initially she was wheelchair-bound and needed therapy to learn to do everything from walking to washing herself.

But as the years have gone by she got more and more of her old self back.

And she credits local brain injury charity Headway Southampton with helping her return to her old life.

“If I hadn’t started coming here, I’d probably still be sitting at home,” she says.

She has been visiting the centre, based in Totton, twice a week for around eight years.

At the centre she does everything from practise her reading and writing – which has suffered greatly as a result of the stroke – to crafts.

It took five years for her to feel she could venture out on her own again but now her confidence has returned and she happily goes into town on the bus and collects her grandson from school by herself.

And in the last few months another skill has returned – knitting.

Brenda was always a keen knitter but after her stroke she found that she couldn’t make anything more complicated than basic scarves.

“A few months ago one of the girls here asked if I wanted to look at a knitting pattern for baby clothes. At first I said ‘no’ because I could only do plain and purl. But then I said I’d take the pattern home and have a look at it that night.

“I had some wool and bits and pieces and sat there for about an hour trying to get it going.

“All of a sudden it was back to how it had always been.

“I shouted to my husband and he came running, thinking something was wrong. I said, ‘Look what I can do now! We were both very excited.

“Since then I’ve tried lots of different patterns. I love knitting.”

Brenda knits for charity Lisa’s Stars, which provides tiny clothing and blankets for families of premature babies which do not survive.

She has made more than 50 items for the charity since she took up complex knitting again.

“I am getting better and better at things like reading and writing, but if this is as good as it gets now, that’s fine,” she says.

“I feel as though the stroke didn’t happen now because I can do so much. I feel that my life is more or less what it would have been if I hadn’t had the stroke.”

  •  Headway Southampton provides services for adults with brain injuries. For more information, visit headway-southampton.org.uk or call 023 8086 2948.
  • For more information about Lisa’s Stars, visit lisasstars.org.uk. If you are interested in knitting for Lisa’s Stars, email abbygreen_lisasstars@hotmail.co.uk.