Georgina's story

Georgina, or ‘G’ for short, was living her best life travelling the world as cabin crew for British Airways when a sudden and unexpected brain injury changed everything.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit global travel, Georgina was placed on furlough, and took the opportunity of time away from her jet-setting job to move to London in between the national lockdowns. In 2021, when flights eventually resumed, Georgina accepted an invite from the airline to return to her previous role.

“I did a flight to the Bahamas. It was fine, but as we landed back into the UK I felt an air pressure like I’d never felt before, and it hurt.

“I came back to London and was meant to be doing a flight to Crete, but I called in sick because I didn’t feel well.

“It was Halloween and my Pulp Fiction outfit was arriving. So that came to the door and all of a sudden, it was like a bag of crisps popped in my head.

I was trying to get to the door, I rang my mum at the time, and I was like: I need to call an ambulance, something’s happening. And I started to have a stroke.

Unbeknown to her, Georgina had an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) in her brain, a condition that arises when blood vessels that supply vital oxygen form into an irregular tangle, making them more likely to rupture.

“I woke a month later after a coma,” she said. “I completely forgot who my family were, pretty much paralysed. I was clueless to what happened to me.

“My sight was still gone at this point and yes, I had to learn everything again.

“I didn’t understand what happened to me. I’d been told I had a brain injury, but I don’t know the capacity for me to understand that.”

The road to recovery

Georgina spent a total of two months in hospital before being transferred to a rehab unit in Leicester, closer to the family home. When she was eventually discharged home, she was told that she likely wouldn’t return to work for five years and would be walking with aids for three.

In the early days Georgina and the family struggled to get the right information to help motivate her recovery, but with support from Headway Leicestershire, information from the Headway website, excellent physiotherapy and above all a huge amount of determination, she has defied the odds to get back to walking without aids and return to work.

“My short-term memory is still really bad,” said Georgina.

“Dates, I’m awful. The other day my mum was with me in London and we were buying some tickets to a west end show. They were online so I bought them really quickly, but the date had already passed. I just can’t get it into my head.

“And dates, as in going on a date, I can say ‘yes we’ll go out next Friday’ or whatever, but then I’ve already got things booked.”

Explaining more about how brain injury has impacted her experience of dating and relationships, Georgina said: “My emotions don’t run very deeply. So it’s great meeting all these people, but then it doesn’t really get much further than that.

It’s hard in the sense that I’ll meet people and then I like them, but afterwards my emotions just aren’t really there. Dating is difficult compared to how it used to be.

Georgina recently appeared on Channel 4's popular dating show First Dates, where she shared her experience of brain injury with her date - and the wider audience.  Her appearance helped raise awareness about life after brain injury, offering insight and inspiration to many viewers.

Returning to work

With her usual show of determination, Georgina is now back working at a restaurant that she took employment with during furlough, and appreciates the support of her colleagues that has helped her successful return.

She said: “I’m lucky that the people around me understand that I have had a brain injury.

“But it’s hard that sometimes I get so tired I can’t push myself further in the job, in my career.

“It has its difficulties – like the amount of calendars and diaries I have, and notes that I have to write everywhere, it’s bonkers!

“And obviously the office take the mick a little bit, like, ‘G, do you need one more diary?’, I probably do.

“It’s all fun, but they see when I do get tired they’re like ‘OK come on, let’s help you’, or ‘don’t come in until 12 o’clock tomorrow, you need a bit of sleep’. So they do understand it.”

One of Georgina’s next goals is to get back to driving, particularly to help with the distances involved between her home in London and family in Leicester. As many people find after brain injury this can be a long process, but we wouldn’t bet against her achieving it soon!

Being a Headway Hero

We know that brain injury doesn’t just affect individuals – it affects entire families. And Georgina’s family have been a huge support throughout. Since the early days, they began fundraising for Headway in order to help others in a similar situation to receive vital support.

We asked Georgina how it feels to have taken on the fundraising challenge, raising more than £3,200 and counting.

“It’s been special! Because it helped me. So the fact that we can help people just feels amazing.

“We do find that people… don’t have much awareness about brain injury and are not educated about it until it happens to them.

To find a platform where you can find people… It really helps.

What drives you forward?

Finally, we asked Georgina about her advice for others affected by brain injury, particularly younger brain injury survivors who are pushing to regain their independence.

“Keep pushing and trying, and if it doesn’t work then genuinely like, ‘so what?’,” she said. “You tried it, because you’d regret it if you didn’t.

“The brain injury lives with me, I don’t live with the brain injury. And I think that’s a good way to think about things.”