Old Wedding with a New edit # 5

This re-edit is from a very special Pencoed House wedding back in 2014. I could write a whole blog about it and not get it anywhere near right so I asked Nikki to write something for me. I did not want to get it wrong or underplay her wedding and pre-wedding experience. So Nikki tells us all about her brain injury and the impact it had.

So the brain injury is. In 2014 I was preparing to get married. Literally life was perfect. I was working full time, studying for a masters in public health. I literally had everything I wanted. On 5th March that changed. I woke up that morning with an horrendous headache. I had been having them on and off for a while but this was different. I said to Andrew I’d go back To sleep for a while. A decision that would later save my life as I would be at home when I collapsed. When I woke up about an hour later I still felt very unwell. But tried to get up and have a shower my last memory that day was whilst in the shower I felt a pop in my head. As I put my hand up to my head I felt the power in my left side go and everything went black. Some time later I came round in the bath. I couldn’t move my left side so I suspected I had a stroke. I then heard a knock on the door it was Andrew who was worried I had been in the shower so long had come to check on me. He broke the door in when he realised I wasn’t ok. Found me called the ambulance etc. I was blue lighted to the Heath (hospital). A bleed on the brain was suspected. What had happened was I had suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm . (This caused a subarachnoid haemorrhage) Upon my arrival at hospital when this was confirmed I was taken in for surgery to coil this. Unfortunately this was risky and I suffered an intra cerebral haemorrhage too. This caused serious swelling in my brain which saw me needing to have part of my skull removed and being placed in a medically induced coma. I spent a week in a coma. I came out of that on 12 March ( the anniversary of the day I met Andrew) unfortunately I was paralysed down my left side due to the stroke. I was left with a brain injury too. I was probably better than the odds I’d be given. After a month or so I was moved to Rookwood a rehab hospital to begin my rehab! They asked me what my goal was and I only asked for one thing and that was to be able to walk down the aisle. We kept the original wedding date as I wanted something to aim for. You (Simon) and all the others involved rallied round to make this possible. Eventually I got on my feet about a month before the wedding. But unfortunately, I couldn’t get the operation to have my plate fitted to replace my missing skull before the wedding so we went ahead anyway! On the condition that I had two people to walk me down the aisle!

It’s such a story and one that I was delighted Nikki was able to share with me again. She is definitely much better but not fully recovered and I am pretty sure this would not be the blog that she would have liked to be written about her. I would have rather written something far more boring and mundane but she was so amazing on her wedding day and the lead up that I do not think there was anyone who was not inspired by her courage and determination. Thank you Nikki and massive love to you both.

I suppose I should (as this series is about re-editing) talk about the re-editing work that I did on this wedding. I opted for a very subtle tonal and colour change from the right out of camera image but I like how clean it looks in both the colour and black and white. Is it too subtle … probably but Nikki was delighted with the new look to them when I sent them to her.

Please get in touch if you have any questions or would like to chat with me about your wedding. The contact form can be found here.