Up until spring 2025, the life of content creator and PR executive Saskia Bishop was a glamorous whirlwind.
When she was not unboxing beauty products on social media, she could be found enjoying herself at gigs or jetting off to Paris with her friends for the city’s fashion week.
That all changed on 21 April last year, when the then-22-year-old fell ill with a terrible headache after getting off a rollercoaster at a theme park in Southend, Essex.
“I just got this massive sharp bang in my head. It was like a bomb had gone off,” said Saskia, who lives between Worcester and Gloucester.
“I was in so much pain that I couldn’t tell my parents what was going on with me.”
Saskia was having a stroke – specifically, a brain bleed caused by a ruptured arteriovenous malformation, an abnormal cluster of blood vessels connecting arteries and veins.
She lost the ability to speak, began to vomit violently and became disoriented, as her dad Scott called for an ambulance to take her to hospital.
After time in intensive care and a 7.5-hour operation, she had to spend many months recovering.
It would be a month before she could speak at all and another three before she could hold a conversation, while she also had to learn to walk again.