A young father who was trapped in his own body after a stroke learned to walk and talk again – by copying his baby daughter.
Mark Ellis was just 22 when he suffered a stroke and developed locked-in syndrome – a condition that leaves the sufferer's brain alert but their body paralyzed.
The sudden stroke in August 2010 left him completely helpless, forcing him to communicate by rolling his eyes.
A previously fit and healthy young man, doctors induced him into a coma and told his shocked family it was unlikely he would survive.
Just two weeks earlier, his wife Amy, 32, had given birth to their daughter Lola-Rose.
Mark amazed his doctors when eight months later he left the hospital and began learning how to talk and walk again – by mimicking his baby daughter.
“It’s amazing that they have learned to do things together, and now Mark can talk and walk with the use of a frame," said Amy Ellis, of Clay Cross, Derbyshire in the U.K.
“There wasn’t much time between him and Lola-Rose both taking their first steps – I think Mark took his first steps a week or two after Lola."
Ellis said the father and daughter team use books, games and an iPad to learn new things together.
Days before his stroke, Mark complained of having a migraine, and visited the hospital, which sent him home with Tylenol.
He continued to feel bad, and went back to the hospital, where he had a MRI. The MRI showed he had already suffered the stroke.
Doctors found Mark had suffered a blood clot in his brain stem, which they described as the worst they had seen in such a young man.
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