A Fife woman who suffered a potentially debilitating brain haemorrhage has said she never gave up on her road to recovery.
Elizabeth Ogg (59), of Dunfermline, took ill in 2001 and spent a year in intensive care at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, before being transferred to the brain injury rehabilitation unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital in the city for a further year.
Elizabeth was then moved to a nursing home in Forfar before two years of intensive rehabilitation in Rosyth from 2004.
The haemorrhage left her paralysed on her left side and blind in one eye at the time.
But yesterday Elizabeth told The Courier that she has defied medical opinion and is now continuing to live on her own in Dunfermline.
She said: When I had the brain haemorrhage the doctors didn’t give much for my future. The doctors at Ninewells Hospital told me I would not be able to live on my own.
”But for two and a half years now I have been living in mainstream accommodation with minimal support.
”My social worker calls me his wee success story. If I can do it, others can do it.”’I’m like everyone else’Elizabeth said that since she came to live in Dunfermline, Fife Council and NHS Fife have been ”very supportive, very helpful and very understanding”.
She is also indebted to the Allied Health Care group, which supplies her care package.
Elizabeth suffered a setback last year when she fell and broke her pelvis, but she has made a recovery and, having completed some study at college and some voluntary work, hopes to go back and do some part-time work.
Help from family and friends has been crucial, she said.
”I manage to lead a very normal life and don’t let my disabilities stop me. I’m like everyone else.
”My message to people who have suffered similar conditions is to have faith in yourself and that anything is possible.
”Due to my self-belief I have managed to walk again and regained the sight in my eye. I had to learn all my basic living skills all over again.”