I’m Kavita Basi and I survived a life-threatening illness. “I’m here today, I’m happy and I’m going to be OK!’ This is the Mantra I repeat every morning. “
Positivity is what has got me through what could have been a completely different outcome.
At 38 years old I suffered a subarachnoid brain haemorrhage, a bleed in the surface of the brain that was caused by a burst aneurysm and my family was faced with a huge shock. With only 50% rate of survival and then a very slim chance of being able to walk again, speak, see and even completely paralysed.
After being in hospital for almost 2 months I had lost 6 weeks of memory. During this time, I also had another stroke and experienced paralysis on my left side of the body – I was taken back into ICU for treatment.
Doing more yoga and meditation has helped with my anxiety, I wanted to give my mind and body every chance of making a recovery
I had 4 brain operations, the last one was implanting a shunt inside my brain which is connected to my bladder (this helps relieve the fluid buildup on the brain).
You see I’m a fighter! I also had so many prayers from family and friends surrounding which gave me the strength to use my mind over matter to help overcome this terrible condition.
I then came to the realisation that I was this whole other person – my personality changed – due to the impact on the brain, it caused a split in personality. I also suffer from short-term memory loss, my noise levels were difficult to manage – I couldn’t take loud noises especially when tired, I had to retune noise day by day.
I was then faced with extreme fatigue and high anxiety, especially when my activities increased, but the biggest thing for me was to overcome my coordination issues, especially walking up and down the stairs at home. This all had a huge impact on my children, husband and friends as it took years for me to get to where I am today.
I then came to the realisation that I was this whole other person – my personality changed – due to the impact on my brain!
I truly believe that I was given a second chance in life and now feel I don’t want to waste this time. I wake up every morning, happy with a smile that I’m here, alive with my family and have a mission to use my experience to help others. I started to change my diet!
Having already been a pescatarian, I also began to eliminate some dairy and gluten, from my diet, to help improve my health. I began to do more of Yoga and meditation – this helped with my anxiety and focus, I wanted to give my mind and body every chance of making a recovery to the best of my ability.
After a hard decision, I left my high powered executive job in a global fashion company to start my own lifestyle brand where I could work on my own time and bring a range of sustainable products to market! I’m very passionate about the social and environmental impacts on our planet. I hope with this I can help make positive changes.
By starting my own YouTube channel and blog I have shared what I went through during my illness. Becoming a Community Ambassador for the Brain & Spine Foundation Charity has meant I can now help others going through similar illnesses too! I do speaking events around the country and overseas on their behalf to help others who are going through a similar experience that I did!
My biggest achievement, so far, is releasing my book: ROOM 23 -SURVIVING A BRAIN HEMORRHAGE.
I still suffer today from a few side effects like short term memory and reading issues – I use audiobooks now. I suffer with occasional headaches and fatigue from increased concentration too – but I have learned to accept and adapt with help from Dr Russel Sheldrick Neuropsychology at the Salford Royal Hospital.
My mindset is to try and stay positive at all times as I know this has helped me so far and I hope it helps others too! One of my quotes ‘This is the new me! Love me as I am or try to adapt’ #newme
Feature from inside our Thrive Health Magazine Summer issue article written by: Kavita Basi / www.kavitabasi.com
Kavita’s story is now available in her book ROOM 23 – surviving a Brain Hemorrhage. A full capture of her time during her illness and during recovery. A great support for anyone going through a similar experience.
