Helping Matt on his road to recovery

Matt Gunn

This is my son-in-laws story, starting on the 6th December 2023.

Matt has been with my daughter for over 6 years now and have 5 children between them living at home with them.

On the 6th December Matt collapsed outside of their house. My daughter managed to get him indoors and rang for an ambulance, they were very quick to arrive and rushed Matt to Ipswich hospital.

After tests they thought Matt may have had a stroke. They arranged for an ICU ambulance to transfer Matt to Addenbrooks for more tests which showed Matt had suffered a massive bleed on the brain. Matt was put into an induced coma to help stop the seizures he was having.

The following day Matt had a 5 hour operation on his brain.

For 15 days although the sedation had been stopped he didn't wake up.

Day 16 he very slowly started to react to some things.

Now up to today and planning ahead, Matt is now fully awake. He can move his arms slowly but he is unable to move his legs yet. Due to having a tracheostomy fitted Matt was nil by mouth and was unable to speak. This has been removed and he had small amounts of soft food and is now talking although slowly and quietly.

Matts recovery is going to be a long slow process. It will not only be a lot of work for Matt but for the children and my daughter Yolanda too.

The help needed is to get the house adapted for when Matt returns home.

The house needs to almost be turned upside down.

Garden gateway needs widening and new gate.

Garden path needs widening for a wheelchair access and Ramp.

Lobby between kitchen and downstairs toilet needs level floors so Matt doesn't have to attempt any steps.

Due to having a dog in the family all downstairs flooring was either vinyl or laminate but needs to be changed to carpets for the safety of Matt. Lounge and dinning room needs to have wheelchair access doorways.

Gosh the list goes on.

We have set up this go fund me account to try and get help for at least some of these jobs.

There are grants and possibly assistance from the council to help with some of this but the council has said it will take months to do the assessments then no saying if they agree to help how long it will take for work to start.

Matt is just 35 years old.

Thank you so much for reading, we understand times are really hard for everyone at the moment but if you are able to help we would appreciate it so much.

Thank you from Matt, Yolanda and mum in law/mum.