A carpenter from Devon spent two weeks in a coma. When he woke up, he didn’t know his own son. Mike Jewell, 42, suffered a haemorrhagic stroke in September 2025.
The sequence of events that followed is a tight chain of misjudgments, emergency surgery, and a father’s blank memory. It started with pressing apples.
Jewell was with friends, making cider or juice, and had a few drinks. Then he began falling over. His friends assumed alcohol was the cause.
They laid him down. Next morning, he went home to his wife, Ellie, 38.
He slept for nearly a full day. When he finally woke, he had a banging headache. Ellie noticed his speech was slurred.
She got him to hospital. Doctors found bleeding in or around his brain. A haemorrhagic stroke.
Jewell underwent emergency brain surgery to relieve pressure. Then they put him in an induced coma.
For two weeks, he was under. When he emerged, his son Morgan was there. The boy was ten months old.
Jewell had no memory of him. “When I woke up from the coma, Ellie said, ‘Here’s your son, he’s yours’, and I just said, ‘What?’,” Jewell told PA Real Life.
“I had no recollection of him or him being born. It was so weird. He had completely gone from my mind.” Morgan had been born while Jewell’s brain was still recording memories.
Those memories were gone. Jewell said he adores the boy now. “He’s brilliant – but at first I just didn’t know what was going on.” Medical staff gave him a grim forecast.
They told Jewell he might never walk again. He didn’t accept that.
In one week, he relearned everyday tasks. Using his phone’s touchscreen. Making a cup of tea.
A few weeks later, he went home. He regained the ability to walk.
His speech improved. By February 2026, he was back at his job full-time. He works as a carpenter and joiner.
Jewell has two other children. Alanah is four. Evie is 13.
The family lives in Barnstaple, Devon. The stroke happened on a September afternoon.
Jewell had been pressing apples with friends. He had a few drinks. Then he fell over.
They thought it was the booze. They laid him down.
That misjudgment cost time. But Jewell survived anyway. The surgery worked.
The coma ended. The memory of his youngest son was gone, but the boy was real and present. Jewell told the story to PA Real Life.
He gave the account from his home in Barnstaple. He said it was weird.
He said he had no recollection. He said he absolutely adores his son. The timeline is tight.
September 2025: stroke, surgery, coma. Two weeks under.
Waking to a son he didn’t know. One week of relearning basic tasks. A few weeks later, home.
By February 2026, back on the job full-time. Jewell beat the prognosis that he might never walk again. He beat the hole in his memory where his son should have been.
The boy is ten months old in the story. That puts his birth sometime in late 2024 or early 2025.
Jewell lived through it. He just can’t remember it. He remembers now.
He knows his son. He calls him brilliant.
But the gap in his mind remains a fact. A ten-month-old child, erased by a bleed in the brain. Then restored by waking up and being told: this is yours.
Sources
- Dad blamed stumbling on drinking too much before waking from…
- I was in a coma dreaming about Romesh and biscuits then… – The Mirror
