As stroke survivors, some things are sent to test us. This morning at 5.55 I awoke to hear my wife vomiting in the ensuite bathroom. I called was she OK, and received a "yes". As she walked back to bed she said she felt dreadful, and before even managing to get between the sheets, she had to return to the bathroom.

The next I hear is a loud crashing sound, and leapt out of as best I could, opened the bathroom door and found Jules unconscious on the floor. She had landed on her head, her left eyebrow had split, and she was bleeding. As I dragged her into a sitting position she came to, and I managed to get her to her feet and dragged her back to bed. As I checked her eyebrow, she fell forward, eyes rolling in their sockets and passed out again. As she came to for the second time, I told her I was calling an ambulance, at which she started wailing not to.

But I did anyway.

The long and the short of it was that we finished with three ambulances outside the front door and 7 paramedics in the house.

Jules was taken by ambulance to Bendigo (about 80km) and I followed in the Subaru about 45 minutes later.

The reason for the passing out? Jules had vomited so much she had become dehydrated. And she was taken to Bendigo because of the egg sized lump on her head where she had fallen, and Kyneton did not have the right Xray equipment.

Jules stayed in hospital all day, but now she is home again. She has one hell of a black left eye, a bruised right rear leg and a headache....but apparently not any bad concussion.

But it can come as a shock when the carer becomes the patient, and the patient becomes the carer.....specially when paramedics, hospitals, split eyebrows, and fainting is involved....not to mention blood.

When we returned home, I lit the fire (another cold Kyneton night) and made soup and toasted muffins...a simple meal but sufficient after such an eventful day. But my experience just shows how a stroke survivor can become a carer if he or she bewlieves in himself or herself, and can maintain an ordered mind. It would have been easy to panic and to have gone to water. Living on a corner does not help....all of our immediate neighbours go to work very early, have small children or are geriatrics. So I knew it was up to me and no-one else.

And Jules today? She looks like she has gone 10 rounds with George Foreman, as she has a wonderful "shiner"! But it hasn't stopped her from working in the garden.