Thank you for the music: How our stroke ward helps people like Paul to live again

Abba musicals, pie and mash and jokes round the dinner table – the Westbrook House Stroke Rehabilitation Unit doesn’t feel like your average hospital ward. But the NHS centre in Margate, which opened in July 2023, is providing the very best in personalised therapy for people in east Kent.

Historian Paul Robbins, 67, from Sholden near Deal, had dashed back to his wife Jackie from one of his many public speaking events in August 2023, when he started to feel unwell. Paul said: “I got home and I decided to cut the grass, then I went upstairs for a bath. I felt sort of weird so I went to bed but then I realised something was seriously off so I banged on the side of the bed to alert Jackie.”

Jackie and Paul Robbins at home

Jackie said: “I could see at once Paul had had a stroke. I rang 999 and he was taken straight to the stroke ward at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital. It was a total blur but the paramedics were wonderful.”

Paul had undiagnosed high blood pressure, causing an ischaemic stroke, when a blood clot blocks the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain. The stroke left him paralysed down his right side and he spent four weeks on the acute stroke ward at the Kent and Canterbury before being told he was moving to Westbrook House.

“I thought I was going there to die,” said Paul. “But I was actually going there to learn to live again.”

Paul soon discovered the unit at Westbrook was not a typical ward. He said: “Everything was personalised to us ­– me and the people in there who were all in the same boat. I wanted to have reminders of my family around me; Jackie, of course, my eldest daughter Sophie, 27, and my 26-year-old twins Charlotte and Robert, along with our grandsons Isaac, four, and baby Ezra. Jackie and I have been married for 36 years, she’s everything to me. So, the team encouraged me to have photos and mementoes round the room to encourage me.

Paul and Jackie on their wedding day

“Along with the regular physiotherapy, which was fantastic, there was a programme of activities every day for us to take part in. Everyone on the ward encouraged each other, especially at mealtimes when we ate together, told jokes and sang songs round the dinner table to keep us all smiling.”

Originally from Bethnal Green, Paul regularly gives lectures around the country about the history of London, the East End and the heritage of the area where he grew up in. “I love West Ham, pie and mash, all that kind of thing,” he explained. “Some of the nurses had never had pie and mash, so we had some brought in with chilli vinegar, which as everyone knows is the only way to eat it. One time we had a film night and watched Mamma Mia together, we were all singing and waving our arms in the air, it was so much fun. It does sound strange but it was such a laugh, I just really enjoyed it all, it was like one big family.”

Paul was discharged after 11 weeks at Westbrook House and now has a community physiotherapist who visits him at home to continue his rehabilitation. “Judith is wonderful and has helped me so much,” he said. “My aim is just to walk again, just to walk out of my front door and go to the village pub, or round the garden. That would do me.

Former stroke patient Paul Robbins thanks staff for ‘giving him his life back’