‘There was a time bomb in my head '

One year on from a devastating brain haemorrhage, Steve Curran tells us about his determination to regain mobility and return to cycling

It was the day after the winter solstice, 22 December, and it started like any other Tuesday for Steve Curran. “I woke up feeling 100% normal,” he casts his mind back to that morning last winter. “I did my normal little circuit of press-ups and sit-ups that I do every morning, played with my little boy for a while, then went for a shower.” As he stepped under the steaming spray, normality suddenly slipped away.

“Instantly, like the flick of a switch, it felt like something popped in my head: instant headache and a feeling of pressure in my head.” Curran looked at his watch. “8:58. I turned the shower off. As I stepped out of the bath, my legs didn’t move quite right but I dismissed it as a slip on the wet surface.” As he dried himself, the strange sensations intensified and he knew he needed to lie down. “It’s only 13 steps from the bathroom to the bedroom, but with every one my legs were getting weaker,” he says. “I was like Bambi on Ice!”

Curran collapsed on the bedroom floor. “My hands were cramping now, I had pinsand-needles all down my right-hand side, and just couldn’t move my legs.” He looked at his watch again. “It was dead-on nine o’clock. The whole thing had taken two minutes: from onset of a headache to being on the floor unable to move anything from the waist down.” He shouted for his wife Tiffany, who ran upstairs, found him on the floor, and called 999.