{"id":20685,"date":"2025-09-13T20:58:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T20:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/20685\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T20:58:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T20:58:06","slug":"young-builder-left-with-vision-loss-after-stroke-caused-by-brain-tumour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/20685\/","title":{"rendered":"Young builder left with vision loss after stroke caused by brain tumour"},"content":{"rendered":"

King\u2018s partner, Abby Holliday, 27, told the Herald his memory of the day things unravelled remained fuzzy. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was Valentine\u2019s Day that he came home from work with a bit of a headache, and we headed out for the night to go camping, just sort of thinking nothing of it,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

By midday the next day, the headache became \u201cpretty gnarly\u201d. <\/p>\n

After a sleepless night in pain, the pair thought he was suffering from a migraine and sought advice from Healthline. <\/p>\n

King\u2019s fingers began to tingle, so the pair rushed to a 24-hour care clinic.<\/p>\n

After getting some fresh air, King collapsed and was later struck with a seizure-like episode because of the pressure buildup in his head. <\/p>\n

King was stiff, muddled and agitated. <\/p>\n

\"King\u2018sKing\u2018s partner, Abby Holliday, told the Herald Joel’s memory of the days things unravelled remained fuzzy. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

\u2018If they don\u2019t do something about it, Joel will die\u2019 <\/p>\n

King was taken in an ambulance to hospital and underwent a CT scan, which showed his ventricles were full of fluid. <\/p>\n

\u201cYour ventricles make the spinal fluid that drains naturally through the body, and they were full and incredibly enlarged.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said they didn\u2019t know why they were enlarged. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll they knew at that point is if they don\u2019t do something about it, Joel will die,\u201d Holliday said. <\/p>\n

King was then taken for an emergency external ventricular drain procedure. <\/p>\n

The morning after the surgery, in an MRI, doctors discovered King had a colloid cyst blocking his ventricle drainage.<\/p>\n

\"JoelJoel King, 28, was diagnosed with a colloid cyst, a benign tumour in his brain, which led to a stroke. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Diagnosis and vision problems<\/p>\n

Holliday said she understands many people who have a colloid cyst aren\u2019t made aware of it until they have a knock on the head or find it by chance during a CT. <\/p>\n

\u201cJoel\u2019s was never known about, had sudden symptoms, and then ended up being life-saving surgery out of the blue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

After a successful surgery to remove the cyst, he was moved to the Neuro progressive care unit. <\/p>\n

It was discovered something was \u201creally wrong\u201d with King\u2019s vision because he wasn\u2019t opening his eyes. <\/p>\n

Doctors looked back over a previous MRI, and they found he had a stroke. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the first time that we found out Joel had a stroke… like six days later.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so much pressure on the brain it sort of stopped the blood flow to the optical lobe, so where his vision box is in his brain, for long enough obviously to cause some damage,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

A couple of weeks later, he moved across to Burwood in the Stroke Care unit in Canterbury, where he recovered well. <\/p>\n

\"AA young builder had his life turned on its head when he was struck by a severe headache that quickly spiralled into a life-threatening condition. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

\u2018You\u2019ll never drive again\u2019: Road to a new normal<\/p>\n

King was told the damage from the stroke was significant. After weeks in rehabilitation, he was finally discharged on April 1.<\/p>\n

Holliday said they were told by an eye specialist he would never drive again and the chances of him returning to his job would be \u201csuper slim\u201d. <\/p>\n

King said he\u2019s struggling to come to terms with everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinding the new norm … I still want to be like normal … I want to be able to do everything that everyone else can,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\"BeforeBefore the stroke, Joel was working as a builder and loved hunting every chance he got. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Holliday said King used to hunt every minute he wasn\u2019t working, and they are working towards finding a new way for him to do this.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can still do that eventually, but it is going to look very different.\u201d <\/p>\n

Since his diagnosis, King\u2019s friends have stepped up and taken him to do \u201cnormal bloke stuff\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"JoelJoel King said he had lost all of his independence. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

\u201cYour life literally gets completely turned upside down and some things taken away from you, and you really do have to fight and work to get them back,\u201d Holliday said.<\/p>\n

The funds donated to the Givealittle<\/a> will go towards specialised rehabilitation through the Laura Fergusson Brain Injury Trust. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"King\u2018s partner, Abby Holliday, 27, told the Herald his memory of the day things unravelled remained fuzzy. \u201cIt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,682,1596,8988,3595,8604,1239,6097,21735,42,296,101,424,21737,2225,43,2848,21736,4371,20705,40,38,41,39,21733,19054,21734,21732,5977,102,4741],"class_list":["post-20685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-being","tag-brain","tag-builder","tag-by","tag-caused","tag-condition","tag-down","tag-headache","tag-headlines","tag-into","tag-left","tag-life","tag-lifethreatening","tag-loss","tag-news","tag-severe","tag-spiralled","tag-stroke","tag-struck","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tumour","tag-turned","tag-upside","tag-vision","tag-which","tag-with","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}