Holy Family Hospital

We’re all familiar with Aesop’s boy who cried wolf: After repeatedly and falsely telling nearby villagers he saw a wolf, the wild dog finally appears. But having been fooled one too many times, the villagers refuse to respond, and the boy meets his ignominious end.

A local man who survived for seven days on his bathroom floor after suffering a stroke says he's still deciding whether he'll be able to return to Dawson Creek.

Steve Adsley, who had a stroke on June 26, was able to survive by drinking water out of his toilet. After seven days, a neighbour who parked outside his first floor apartment heard Adsley's cries for help and called paramedics.

In the weeks that followed, Adsley's story gained worldwide media attention.

VANCOUVER—Water from a toilet bowl and thoughts of his family kept a 62-year-old Dawson Creek, BC, man alive for a week when a stroke left him partially paralyzed on his bathroom floor.

Sitting in a wheelchair at the Holy Family Hospital in Vancouver, Steve Adsley calmly recounted his harrowing seven-day misery after he collapsed in his condominium on June 26.

Jammed between the vanity and the toilet, the retired financial controller and father of three said he struggled to move his body but his entire left side was paralyzed.

Keven Drews reports

Steve Adsley never thought it would happen to him. The 62-year-old man suffered a stroke that left most of his body paralysed and trapped in his bathroom—for seven days. He knew that he was going to need water, so he got creative.

“I was able to hook part of my arm into the toilet bowl and I drank the water that was in the toilet bowl,” Mr. Adsley tells As it Happens guest host Helen Mann.