Page 18 - Community Health magazine - issue 38

Home for the harvest

After surviving a stroke, Anthony Sinden became one of the first patients at our specialist rehabilitation
unit in Margate. Chloe Crouch went to meet ‘Tony’ on his farm to find out what it takes to get back
home after a stroke.

s the sun shines and the breeze 1897 and I built my house for my wife “I have always been active and never
blows across the fields, there when we were married in 1955. We really spent much time in hospital, but
Ais the faint sound of sheep raised our two sons here and I was born I knew as it was happening that I was
bleating and you can instantly see why in the house next door. It is home. having a stroke.”
Anthony Sinden has worked so hard to
come home.
Tony, as he likes to be known, is 92
years-old. Born and bred on the Romney
Marsh, he has worked every day for
more than 80 years on his family-run
farm, which has sustained more than
five generations.
Even on the day he had a stroke, back
in June, he had been fixing some clutch
plates on a lawnmower at the croquet
club, when he felt his foot go ‘heavy’.
After a while, it wore off, then his
arm went numb and by the evening, his
mouth had started to droop.
His son Andrew whisked him to
hospital and after a few weeks, he was
moved to Heron Ward at Queen Victoria
Memorial Hospital in Herne Bay.
Tony said: “I have always been in
good health and up to the day I had the
stroke I was very independent.
“I would walk down the road from my
house to the farm every day and help
out by greasing the combine harvester
or cleaning up the yard.
“This farm has been in my family since

Tony Sinden on his farm
with Therapy Assistant
Practitioner Judy Underhill

18 www.kentcht.nhs.uk