Lorna Still, 34, from Beckton, is a finalist in the carer of the year category at Headway UK’s Annual Awards for her care and dedication to her husband Ali, who sustained a brain injury in 2022.
Ali, 26, was involved in an electric bike accident that resulted in him colliding with another cyclist and landing on his head.
Lorna said: “At the time doctors didn’t think that he was going to survive and they told me to prepare for the worst, because it was a lot of damage.
“But he’s a fighter and he fought through.”
Ali experienced tonic-clonic seizures at the scene and was airlifted to Royal London Hospital, where he spent three months before being transferred to the Blackheath Brain Injury Rehabilitation Centre.
He underwent a craniotomy and had half of his skull on the left-hand side removed.
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He now lives with complex medical challenges, including aphasia, epilepsy, partial blindness, and is deaf in his right ear.
Lorna was 16 weeks pregnant with their youngest child at the time of the accident.
She said: “He actually forgot all of his English and was just speaking broken Arabic.
“I don’t speak Arabic, so we didn’t know what he was saying.
“Royal London were brilliant and they got Arabic-speaking health care assistants to come and sit with him, to try interpret bits of what he was saying.”
Ali now attends a weekly evening session at Headway East London.
Lorna said: “Headway East London does him so much good.
“He’s in an environment with other people who understand what he’s going through and who aren’t going to judge him.
“He loves art and comes away with so many paintings and drawings.”
She was nominated for the award by friends.
On learning she was a finalist, she said: “I cried happy tears when I found out.
“I was really emotional.
“It was just so lovely to feel that people notice that I’m not alone; people do realise what I’m going through.”
The Headway Annual Awards will take place on December 12 at The Royal Lancaster in London.
