I have a friend who like me is a stroke survivor, but she has an electronic device implanted into the calf muscles of her leg to help her walk.

This device is called a Functional Electronic Stimulation (FES). As medical science moves gradually forward to help those of us with damaged neurological systems, this is the closest thing that I have come across to a bionic leg. The implant in the calf muscles stimulate the leg muscles to raise the foot after the heel triggers a switch in the shoe when the heel touches the ground. This enables the foot to swing through as she steps forward without the foot hanging down and catching the ground – causing a trip.

I recently accompanied my friend to the hospital to have some adjustments made to her FES device. But when the medical engineer saw me limping across the room, struggling against the effects of my stroke, he immediately suggested that the device would be good for me and could help me.

Other patients have reported that this device helps them walk much longer distances and with much less fatigue. Walking makes me very tired and I would love to be up to walking the long distances that I was once able to do before my stoke.

To run again would be an absolutely amazing thing but I don’t really think that’s possible. But who knows, never say never.

Unfortunately I have discovered that this device is not available on the NHS in Oxfordshire and would cost approximately £2,000 to buy privately. So I have a difficult decision to make. Do I persevere with this and go for the operation to have the implant put into my leg? It could be an absolutely wonderful thing, but what if I don’t like it? Once it has been put in my leg it’s impossible to remove quickly and easily.

I have been thinking about this now for a couple of weeks and seeking advice from all the medical practitioners that I know who might have an educated opinion on the subject.

The truth is what really frustrates me is that a lot of the treatment for stroke survivors involves treating the symptoms rather than the cause. For example, stroke survivors like me often have to wear splints on their hands or legs and take large amounts of drugs to control unbalanced muscles that result from the brain injury.

I wish that a brain surgeon could go into my brain and fix the bits that have been injured by the haemorrhage that I had.

Current research on the use of stem cells to repair injured parts of the body is bringing this dream a little closer. To think that one day stem cells might be able to be injected into my brain repairing injured parts and bringing back my paralysed arm and my eyesight, as well as my semi-paralysed leg, is mind blowing. The researchers will probably get there eventually, but perhaps not in my lifetime. I would love a time machine so that I could whizz forward to the future and have the treatment.