National Stroke Week: Tamworth's Alan and Judy Sumner tell their story as a warning to others

He'd had a stroke, and just two days earlier he was hit with a terrible headache while on holidays with his wife Judy.

"The day I was supposed to go back to work he went to get out of the bed and fell on the floor, I didn't think young people had strokes," she said.

"I thought we'd get him back in bed because he was moving around on the floor trying to get up and I needed to get up and go to work.

"So because it was so long before we actually got the ambulance and he got any treatment, he had a lot of damage done by the first stroke and then he had a second stroke in the same area 11 years later."

It's National Stroke Week and this year frontline healthcare workers and the health professionals who support the recovery of survivors is being celebrated.

It encourages people to recognise FAST (face, arms, speech, time) to catch one of the country's biggest killers and a leading cause of disability.

If someone suspects a stroke, they should check whether the person's mouth has drooped, if they can life both arms, if their speech is slurred or they understand conversation and time is critical.

More than 27,000 people had a stroke for the first time in Australia last year.

Mr Sumner had started to regain some of his functionality, but he was hit hard by his second stroke and now uses a wheelchair to get around most of the time.

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He also has aphasia, which means while he may want to respond in conversations - the connection between his mouth and brain doesn't work properly.

Mrs Sumner said while the words are there, they won't come out.

"Don't ignore it like I did, time is a big thing because the longer it is the more brain cells that die," she said.

"The amount of younger people who have strokes is shocking, I always though it was people in their 80s or 90s. I don't know why I just thought it was an old people's thing."

The theme of National Stroke Week is United by Stroke.

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