Matthew Tukaki is thankful a stroke and brain bleed happened while he was in Australia. Photo / Supplied
Matthew Tukaki is thankful a stroke and brain bleed happened while he was in Australia. Photo / Supplied
Māori advocate Matthew Tukaki counts his blessings that a stroke and brain haemorrhage happened while he was in Australia “because if it happened here, mate, I’d be dead”.
“I suffered a massive medical event that could have ended my life,” Tukaki told the Herald.
“I was lucky because if it had have happened to me in New Zealand, the brutal truth is I would be dead.
“If the Auckland traffic hadn’t taken me, navigating emergency would have, not withstanding post care would have seen me descend into depression – it would have been harder for me to pull myself up and out in order to get on with life.
“The time it would have taken to get the 7.7km to the nearest hospital from my house in Auckland is nearly 30 minutes. That’s if the ambulance had have arrived on time in the first place.”
Tukaki said for more than 9000 New Zealanders who suffer a stroke, time, is of the essence.
“There is no golden hour, that’s reduced depending on where you live. You need to get to the hospital as quickly as possible to stem the bleeding on your brain otherwise that’s it. Lights out.”
Matthew Tukaki lay in hospital thanking his lucky stars a stroke and brain bleed happened in Australia. Photo / Supplied
In March 2023, Tukaki, was in Australia for a mental health conference. The former Oranga Tamariki advisory board chair was at a Sydney apartment and had just finished a team zoom with his New Zealand crew when he felt ill. He crawled to the bathroom, where he was physically ill.
“Alone and scared I didn’t know what to do,” Tukaki said.
He called a friend, who called an ambulance and stayed with him on the phone until the paramedics arrived. Tukaki crawled to the lounge to unlock the doors and buzz the ambulance staff in.
“I told my friend I was very cold and scared. I fell again, this time hitting my head and then my angels arrived,” Tukaki said.
“The only other memory I have of that day is being dressed in a hospital gown standing in the corner of a room watching these men dressed in coats working on me. I was yelling but no one could hear me. But it wasn’t cold any longer. I remember it felt warm like a summer’s day.”
Tukaki said the speed at which the ambulance staff got to him and got him to the hospital is what saved him.
“I began to slowly wake up in the ICU although I had zero memory at that point about what had happened. I was told that the back of my skull had to be removed. That the pipes in and out of my head were to drain fluid, that I had undergone major brain surgery as the result of suffering a cerebral haemorrhage. I instantly knew I had no feeling in my left side. I couldn’t see who was talking to me. I felt awful. I promptly went back to sleep. It was the noise that got me, with a lot of beep beeps and the whirring of machines. The one thing I felt was someone holding my hand.
“It was a tough time but reflecting on it the experience has seen me appreciate more the time we have. I survived. And while it was the closest of calls the message is push through. Keep going.”
Back home, Tukaki soon discovered he would need to get back on his feet, physically and financially quickly.
“I survived only to then discover the support available was limited,” he said.
“ACC didn’t cover me, although if I had have fallen over in the process of having the haemorrhage thereby hitting my head in the process it might be a different story. This is where the domino effect took up.
“Because I had lost my mobility I initially thought I needed home help but alas that wasn’t a thing, increasingly relying on friends and family to help out with getting to appointments to picking up prescriptions. After a while that dried up as well not because they didn’t want to help, but because they had their own jobs to go back to and lives.
“The truth is that whether you are in the cities or in our rural areas, time is of the essence and in my case had this happened to me here at home as opposed to in Sydney, I would be dead.”
Joseph Los’e is an award winning journalist and joined NZME in 2022 as Kaupapa Māori Editor. Los’e was a chief reporter, news director at the Sunday News newspaper covering crime, justice and sport. He was also editor of the NZ Truth and before joining NZME worked for urban Māori Authority Whānau Waipareira.
