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Direct-to-patient sales are booming - but patient engagement teams still treat patients as data, not customers. A stroke survivor's case for co-design in pharma. I was sitting in a conference room in London, half-listening to a panel called “The Patient Voice in Action.” Every speaker on that stage worked in patient engagement. Every single slide was about a drug. Adherence to a drug. Trial recruitment for a drug. A “patient journey” that existed to get someone onto a drug an

The economic case for lived experience has already been made - just not here, yet. The meeting wasn’t unkind. They rarely are. The patient voice tends to be item seven on the agenda, somewhere between communications update and any other business. Eighteen months on from the stroke, in one of the research institutions that has invited me in as a lay stakeholder, I have been in enough of these rooms now to know that the slot on the agenda is the slot in the structure. Item seve

On starting over after stroke — and why I've stopped calling it starting over My stroke came at one of the most stressful points in my career. I didn't love what I was doing. I knew I wanted something different — something entrepreneurial, something that felt like mine — but I couldn't quite land on what. There were ideas. The AI bandwagon was right there, ready, beckoning. I was good at it. I could have jumped on. But my body intervened. My brain, actually — which has its ow

On why burnout might be the push you didn't know you needed There's a particular kind of tired that isn't fixed by sleep. I know, because I've felt it. That Sunday-evening feeling that starts creeping in around 4pm — the dread that settles in your chest before the week has even begun. The kind of tired where you're sitting in a meeting and you genuinely cannot remember why any of this matters. Where you're ticking things off a list, performing competence, going through every

I filed neuroplasticity under jargon. I was wrong. The biology behind why the story isn't over — written by a stroke survivor.

By coffee number ten, I'd finally managed to pour the milk in the right cup. My six-year-old helped. She didn't make a big deal of it. A week later, I thought I'd cracked it — only to drop the whole cup when I lifted it with my stroke hand. And I just stood there in my kitchen, surrounded by the mess, thinking: Sisyphus. Pushing the boulder up the mountain. Watching it roll back down. Getting up tomorrow and doing it all again. That's the thing nobody tells you when you sign

“Let’s run and cash the bush.” My daughter looked at me. “Mum, that’s not right.” She was seven. And she’d noticed before I had. That was one of the first times I realised something was off — not stroke off, not hospital off, but quietly off. The kind of off that doesn’t show up on a scan. Since my stroke, I’ve noticed what I can only call weird things. Little glitches. Quirks that don’t quite fit any diagnosis I’ve been given. Like the time I was out for coffee with a frien

When a stroke happens to you, it also happens to everyone around you — and almost nobody talks about what comes next for them.

If you see me out and about, I probably look fine. That’s all down to a little post-stroke sleight of hand. Stroke survivors become very good at putting on a show for public appearances. We rest beforehand. We plan. We arrive with our game face on. You see the polished hour, but you don’t see the horizontal recovery that follows at home. Post-stroke fatigue is a real disability. It’s a silent one, and one that people rarely ever know about. When people outside our home see us

A stroke survivor shares why she's pursuing a neuroscience degree while managing recovery, family life, and building tools to help others navigate healing.

I remember being pregnant with my first. The excitement about finally meeting him. The terror of what I would do without an operating manual to help me through. The acceptance that the next few years of my life would be spent craving more sleep than I would ever get. What I wasn’t prepared for was the heavy weight of guilt that comes along with every child. Literally from day one. Did we get the right car seat? Will he be safe? Am I holding him right? Why won’t he fee

I tried to have it all—brilliant career, perfect motherhood, flawless home. Then my stroke forced me to learn a better way. You don't need it all to be happy.

Why Women Might Not Be Able to Have It All PepsiCo Chair and CEO Indra Nooyi famously shared her reality about life as a high-functioning woman. “I don’t think women can have it all,” she said . “We pretend we can have it all.” And when I first read that, I must admit, I scoffed. There I was, having it all. A wife, a mother, a fast-moving exec working in fascinating tech start-ups. I was having my cake and eating it too. Every last scrap. Then, I had my stroke. And I did

Lived experience matters. Peer Support: A Real Route To Representation.

Recovering from a stroke is a journey that's physical, cognitive, mental and more... Three years ago, I told a neurologist that I woke up...

Fighting for continuity of care. Becoming your own best friend.

This isn’t the end of my story. It’s a reset. A second chance. And with that comes clarity, courage, and a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive.

This story isn’t about trashing the NHS. It saved my life. But once I was discharged, I entered a void.

Three years ago, I had a stroke. I was young. 43. Career-driven, chief of staff at a high-growth start-up. Every task was urgent.