A 48-year-old man who suffered a stroke last year is walking from Olds to Red Deer Oct. 2-4 to raise money and awareness for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
The event is called the Heart and Stroke and Stroll to Success.
Daniel Trudell lives in Torrington but says he's walking from Olds because he does most of his business -- like shopping and church-going -- in this community.
He plans to begin the walk at 8 a.m. Oct. 2 at the intersection of highways 27 and 2A in the Petro Can parking lot. He will then head north through Bowden and Innisfail, ultimately finishing in Red Deer.
He plans to complete the journey by walking at least 20 kilometres (km) per day, finishing the 60-km walk in three days.
Trudell, who was an enthusiastic motorcycle rider before the stroke, plans to end the journey at the Harley Davidson dealership along Gasoline Alley. His mom hopes to accompany him but she is expected to undergo an operation that week. His 15-year-old daughter is flying out from Vancouver to join him.
“My goal is (to raise) $10,000,” he says. “I have some sponsors already.”
It won't be an easy journey for Trudell. He still has a limp as a result of the stroke.
“It was a bleed in my brain which totally affected my left side. I'm still recovering from it; I don't walk properly yet. Running is out of the question. I tried that and it just didn't work very well. I have a limp now; that's why I chose a walk,” Trudell says.
“My left side was affected; my right foot – my ankle – hurts from assisting my limp. So it's going to be quite the trek. I've split it into three days though – 20 clicks a day. I think that 20 for me is going to be pretty challenging anyway, but it's something (I want to do); it's time to give back,” Trudell says.
“I just thought of it not long ago. I want to do it in October because who knows what's going to happen with me? I want to do one thing, just one thing, before anything happens to me in my life again.”
Trudell has been preparing for the stroll by walking on a treadmill and walking around Torrington.
“I've always been in pretty good shape; I think that's part of the (reason for the) speed of my recovery. I walked out of the hospital in two days less than seven weeks,” he says.
Trudell wants to raise money and awareness about the Heart and Stroke Foundation for three main reasons.
For one thing, he says, while impressive, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has raised money and awareness for that condition far out of proportion to the number of people who are actually affected by that disease, compared to heart attacks and stroke.
He says the difference in graphs showing how many people are affected by each of those conditions is “like a baseball to a basketball.”
“Heart attacks and strokes are one of the most common causes of death in the world,” Trudell says. “The research just needs to be so much more advanced. It's sad that it always takes money.”
Trudell has a page in the Heart and Stroke Foundation Canada website, under Stroke Stroll. People can donate on there.
“I don't take any money – I don't want any money touching my hands. It's all legit online. If people do give me some money, it goes right to my mom and she deposits it,” he says.
Secondly, Trudell wants to spur people who are afflicted with heart attacks and/or strokes to fight hard to get better.
“The first ward I was on -- I call it the sheet ward -- you live or die, basically, and I've seen people getting sheeted out of there. That made me realize I'm not going to be one of them, and my determination was to get better,” he says.
“There was a lady in there who had the exact same stroke as me and she was shutting down.‘Oh well, if I'm like this for the rest of my life I guess I can live like that,' she said.
“I got angry because I was walking at the time. I stood up at the table and I yelled at her. I said, ‘don't you ever act like that. Don't you think like that. Look at me.' It was emotionally very hard in there. But it's a personal thing, personal journey,” Trudell says.
“Every day – I'm not kidding – I had my earphones on and I was playing Eye of the Tiger from the Rocky film – every day, all the time. I was literally working out – my arms, my hands, my fingers – every day.”
Thirdly, Trudell wants to encourage people to check and monitor themselves for risk factors that could lead to a heart attack or stroke.
When he was in the hospital, Trudell had his laptop with him. He posted advice on Facebook.
“People were sending me stuff, and friends of their friends were too, saying ‘thank you, thank you, I just went and got tested; I'm a diabetic type 2,' or people were telling me their high blood pressure's controlled now, because that's what caused my stroke.”
Trudell says he was lucky his stroke occurred when it did.
“I was riding my Harley that day when it happened. It didn't happen on the bike. I was with my ex-girlfriend. She was on the back. We were going up and down Deerfoot, 110, 120 (kilometres an hour) Lethbridge, Edmonton. We were on the bike all day on the Deerfoot there, Highway 2,” Trudell says.
“We went home to her place, parked the bike and went in the house. It was not even five minutes. I sat in my riding gear on the couch and had my stroke,” he adds.
“The first thing I said to her was, ‘my God, it could have been on the bike. You've got angels with you.' I could have killed her or anyone else, doing 110, 120 on Deerfoot.”
The Heart and Stroke Foundation is now near and dear to him.
“I've got a tattoo of the Heart and Stroke Foundation logo on my heart,” Trudell says.
Pull Quote
"My goal is (to raise) $10,000," he says. "I have some sponsors already."
