I Won A Literary Prize While I Was Unconscious

HER NOVEL WAS AN 18-YEAR LABOUR OF LOVE, THEN SHE MISSED ITS NIGHT OF GLORY.

- Lynley Ward

When writer Kirsten Warner went for a bike ride to clear a niggling headache, she could never imagine a cruel twist of fate would see her miss two major milestones and steal months from her life.

What should have been a glorious year of literary success for the 62-year-old west Aucklander turned to chaos in March when she was struck by a catastrophic brain aneurysm.

Still recovering from the nightmare ordeal, the former journalist and mum of two knows she is lucky to be alive but is sad that a prestigious book award win and an accolade for her musician partner both came in a scary eight-week period when she was out cold undergoing a series of life-saving operations.

There’s a large gap in her memory that she’s reliant on family and friends to fill – including a night that should have been one of the best of her life.

“I had no idea what was going on, really, and how long it had been. I couldn’t believe that I had been in hospital for six weeks,” she tells the Weekly.

On that fateful March day, the keen cyclist had headed out on her bike to clear her head of a persistent ache. But after an hour of riding it was getting worse. Thinking she was in the throes of a violent migraine, she called her partner Bernard Griffen (68) to take her home. Within minutes, her condition dramatically deteriorated.

“I was completely struck,” she recalls. “I couldn’t bear the light, and the headache was getting worse. I thought it was a migraine, but by the time I got into my bedroom the pain in my head was so intense I said to my partner, ‘ambulance’. I couldn’t say any more.”