In March this year, steelworker Mike Hambly woke up with a headache and took some paracetamol. Moments later, he was sick and lost his balance. 

It was the start of a nightmare that has lasted nearly five months for cycling and kick-boxing fan Mike, 33, and his wife Rebecca with little sign of an immediate end. Mike is still in hospital, unable to talk and waiting to move to a bed on a rehabilitation ward in the hope he may start to recover.

Rebecca, 32, from Swansea, has been constantly at his side as he has been transferred between hospitals and endured a series of devastating setbacks as medics have sought to save his life from a type of brain haemorrhage and subsequent complications that he might not have survived.

Rebecca, who has been with Mike for seventeen years and married for three, said: "Mike woke up at 6am complaining of neck pain and a headache, he then took some paracetamol but within minutes he was being sick and sweating, he then lost his balance in the bathroom."

Paramedics initially thought it was just a bug but Mike got worse throughout the day and couldn't look at any light, his balance got worse, he was sweating, in pain and was vomiting. Rebecca phoned the paramedic again and they took Mike to A&E.

Rebecca said: "Six hours after Mike left in the ambulance, I had a call to explain Mike had a bleed on the brain and needed to be transferred to a hospital in Cardiff and if I could get there asap to see him before he left.

"This news made me go into panic mode, I never thought that it could be this, I couldn't stop shaking and crying, as I don't drive I had to phone my mother to ask her to come and take me to the hospital. "

When Mike arrived at Cardiff, he was seen by neurology doctors who phoned Rebecca to say they think he Mike has an aneurysm (a bulge in a blood vessel caused by a weakness in the blood vessel wall), so they were going to take him to theatre and scan him.

a man looking at the camera

After a few hours, Rebecca had a call to say Mike had a seizure and a bleed so he needed to go to ITU, She was told to prepare for the worst.

Rebecca said: "This news made me go to pieces and could not answer the phone calls from the hospital in case it was going to bad news that I did not want to hear."

While Mike was in ITU they could not find a cause of the bleed, Mike woke himself up from sedation and was slowly coming round over two days, then they found out he had pneumonia as a result of being ventilated.

Due to the pneumonia , Mike needed to be ventilated again and during this time he had infections, reactions to medication, An vasospasm which is a complication of a subarachnoid hemorrhage which caused small areas of brain damage.

Before Mike became ill, he used to enjoy kick boxing, weight training and cycling and never complained of feeling unwell and Rebecca describes him as a kind, caring, hardworking and witty kind of man.