Mending Ali

In the early hours of Thursday 10th December, our beloved brother/boyfriend/ son/best friend, Ali Turpie suffered from a stroke.

Ali was making his way home from work in a taxi, where he suddenly lost his ability to speak.

We were fortunate that Ali’s physical movement wasn’t impacted and he was able to get to his girlfriend Liv, who immediately drove him to St. Peter’s hospital.

From there, Ali was diagnosed with a left MCA infarct. He was thrombolysed to try and breakdown the clot that had cut the blood supply off to his brain. From there he was taken to the hyper acute stroke unit to begin his recovery. 

Whilst this is devastating news for Ali’s close family and loved ones, we’re thankful this was caught as early as it could be. Unfortunately Ali’s speech and language processing has been quite badly affected. He understands everything but is currently unable to form words or sentences verbally and is moderately affected in his ability to write. 

We’re working together to ensure that everyone close to Ali has a chance to help him in whatever way possible and appreciate this is devastating news for people that know Ali in any capacity.

If you know Ali, then you’ll know that he will be as eager as we are to get him back to his high achieving life, or if not better.

But, we have to be patient and accept that his recovery might not be as quick as we’re hoping. All of the doctors and therapists think this is going to be a long road ahead to see what kind of recovery he will make.

This means that his loved ones may have to make personal and financial sacrifices in order to support him over the coming months.

So, we’ve decided to put together a go fund me page. In order for people to support and accelerate Ali’s recovery in any way that they can. These funds will help with any costs of private speech therapy and private second opinions from neurologists and cardiologists, and also to cover some of the financial burdens that Michelle (his mum) will incur being self employed now that she will have to spend time caring for him. 

There will be a few events in the coming weeks that people can get behind to show solidarity and help raise money for Ali. More details of this will follow.

If in the due course of time when the costs of Ali’s recovery become completely apparent and we have raised more money than we need then any surplus will be donated to a stroke charity of Ali’s choice

Thank you all so much. And in Ali’s words:

Let’s do this.

Things people are asking:

Can Ali understand what’s happening?

Yes. Ali has an expressive aphasia so he cannot express language but his receptive linguistic centre is intact so he understands what people say when they talk to him.

Can Ali communicate in any way?

Yes. Currently Ali can give a thumbs up or thumbs down. We’re working with speech therapists to hopefully extend this to his favourite phrases and using a stroke board to improve his range of communication.

Has Ali’s physical movement been affected?

Ali has suffered a slight weakness in his right hand side. He has a right sided facial droop and his right arm is slightly less strong than before. He remains able to to move, shower, brush his teeth etc. And has essentially normal functioning from a motor perspective.

What caused this?

This is being investigated currently and we don’t actually know. Essentially a blood clot ended up in Ali’s brain but why that blood clot got there is unexplained. As the results of his investigations come in we will be able to give you further updates.

How long will it be until Ali can speak again?

Right now, we don’t know as every recovery is different.
But knowing Ali as well as we do, we know that how Ali sounds right now and how he will sound a year from now will be unrecognisably different.

I want to help, what can I do?

We really appreciate your kind words of support and know that all of Ali’s friends and family will want to do something. Just like Ali, We’re not very good at resting.
Michelle, Jon and Liv are processing this at their own pace, so if possible, please have a look at social media or people around Ali’s friendship group for updates etc.
We’re working on making Ali’s 10KTurpie in to a page that everyone can update, get involved with and, most importantly, give Ali insight to what’s happening right now in all of our lives.

Can Ali read messages on his phone? Is there any way we can communicate to him?

Ali is currently struggling with his phone, reading and responding to messages. He also becomes quite tired quite quickly so it’s best to hold fire on facetiming at the moment. We’re hoping in the coming days to weeks he’ll be able to start going through his messages so send them on and I’m sure they’ll be read at some point. He needs all the encouragement he can get.

But if you’d like anything to get to him in the near future, perhaps pop Michelle, Jon, Liv, Ollie or one of his close friends a message.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far. 

Now, let’s get this smile back!

Thank you everyone for your continued love, messages and support, we couldn’t do all this without you. It honestly means the world ❤️