So Apparently I had a Stroke This Year.

A couple weeks ago, a day after having two MRIs--one on my brain and one on my cervical spine--my phone woke me up at around 11:00 am with a dreaded "no caller ID" call. I consider this "dreaded" because both times I've gotten unexpected wake-up calls from police departments, that is what has shown up on the screen. Hoping against hope, I answered the phone. It was my neurologist. Still groggy from interrupted sleep, I didn't think anything of it. We exchanged the normal pleasantries, and then he got down to the point. He said, "The MRI yesterday shows signs of a stroke on the right side of your brain."

I was completely caught off guard and took a minute to digest this new information. I then repeated to the doctor what he had just said to me to make sure I'd heard and understood him correctly. He confirmed I had, apologized for giving such news over the phone, and then emphasized that he'd done so because he'd thought I should know. He then asked me if I had any questions. I racked my (apparently partially damaged) brain and came up with nothing. I didn't know enough about strokes to even know what to ask. He then told me that at our next appointment, he'd go over the images with me, and then he said for me to call him if I had any questions--any questions at all--before our follow-up. He said he would be referring me to a hematologist to figure out if I had any blood disorders that would affect my clotting abilities. He told me to keep taking a baby aspirin each day and that he was prescribing me Lipitor to help prevent another stroke. We said our goodbyes and I looked at my phone in disbelief. I'd JUST turned 38 earlier that month. I'd been half expecting an MS diagnosis or possibly even some sort of tumor, but a stroke had never been a possibility in my mind, even from the very beginning.

About a week after the Texas winter hellscape of 2021 finally thawed, I had my first "episode." Or at least that's what I started calling them, "episodes." I was walking around my house doing something adult-y that was definitely NOT cleaning (trust me) and my left arm and leg started to feel funny. They went numb and a bit tingly and felt weak. Instead of doing what a reasonable person would--finding a way to an ER ASAP--I made it over to my couch and sat down as if I were waiting for my limbs to wake back up after having fallen asleep. After 10-15 minutes, I opted to test out my now tingle-free left leg. I stood up, putting all the weight on my right leg at first, and then began to shift back and forth from foot to foot. The left leg seemed to hold, so I took a few test steps and started moving my left arm around, lifting it and twisting it to make sure it was following instructions again. Convinced that everything was fine and it had just been some weird health blip, I walked off any remaining "off" feelings and went about the rest of my day getting ready for my son to come back from his father's.

Now before you start (if you haven't already) yelling at me through your screen to pull my head out of my backside and GET TO A DOCTOR, please note that I'm the type of person who needs medical things to happen more than once before I'll consider getting an MD involved. Is that the type of person I recommend others be? Absolutely not. You should keep your head out of your tush and go to the ER the FIRST time something potentially major happens.

Later that night, my anxiety decided to fixate on this odd occurrence. I knew that numbness on one side of the body was supposed to be a sign of a stroke, but I was a relatively healthy, 37-year-old, non-smoker taking an hormonal birth control that was supposed to have astoundingly low levels of hormones. I also didn't appear to have any major negative side effects. I could still walk and think and speak. Strokes were a big deal that sent you to months of rehab and/or physical therapy. I'd seen movies. I'd read newspaper and magazine articles. There was no way my little "episode" could have been a stroke or anything like it. It just didn't add up. (If you truly knew the depth of my lack of mathematical skills, you'd find that statement highly ironic.) And so for the first (and likely only) time in my life, my anxiety decided to let something go, but not without promising to torment me with worst-case scenarios until I wanted to scream if another "episode" occurred and I didn't contact a doctor.

Probably a week or so and another "episode" later, my anxiety should have made good on its promise. But even then, the mental health issue I'd come to depend on to motivate me to do things completely failed me. Instead of sounding the mental klaxons and demanding action, it shrugged and said, "Don't you think a third 'episode' would mean you 100% need to see someone about this? I mean, c'mon, is two times really THAT convincing?" I thought that for once my anxiety was staying in check and having some really capital ideas, so I agreed to not do a thing unless "episode" three made an appearance.

A couple weeks later, while riding shotgun as my boyfriend drove me and his two daughters to lunch, I could feel another "episode" occur. It wasn't over by the time we parked, so when Jon opened my door, I had to confess that I was having some of that "numbness stuff." Back in his native country of Iceland, Jon was a member of the Search and Rescue team and had gone through some paramedic training. He immediately started asking me to do things like raise both my arms and smile. After I (apparently) failed his tests, he grimly asked me if I wanted him to take me to the ER. I shook my head, not wanting a nice lunch for the four of us to turn into an ER visit of unknown length that would probably reveal not a durn thing. Jon, knowing me well enough to not attempt to take me to an ER against my will, leaned in and whispered, "Have you made a neurologist appointment yet? You need to." I promised I would ASAP, and when the numbness and weakness subsided, he helped me out of the car and we all went to a hamburger joint.

I highly suspect that "episode" was the actual stroke. Perhaps the others were TIAs (transient ischemic attacks). I didn't have anymore episodes after that day, though my left hand seemed to have lost some of its dexterity and fine motor skills. Considering I work remotely and spend most of my day tapping away on a keyboard, this proved frustrating. I had to start proofreading everything I typed--even social media comments. All too often, I found I needed to make corrections. But I kept typing, telling myself that it was like having physical therapy. Even now, 2 months later, I still hit the caps lock button too often when meaning to press the "a" key and putting on a bra or a necklace with a clasp can be challenging. And don't get me started on trying to put a bracelet on my right wrist. I'm right-handed, so my left hand has never been as adept as her counterpart, but this was a level of inability I was not used to. My grip strength and ability also suffered. I started making sure to never hold breakable objects in my left hand, but other than that, I tried to live life as normally as possible, figuring that my hand would get stronger and more skilled if I kept using it. And it did. As I mentioned above, it still doesn't behave as well as it used to, but it's gotten a lot better.

We (me and my team of doctors) may never know specifically what caused my stroke--though my endocrinologist's money is on my birth control. Even though it was a low dose type, it still contained warnings about blood clots, so he may be right. Me? I'm still convinced the massive amounts of stress I'd been under played a part. But I'm also getting tired of doctor visits and medical tests. As of now, the only test I have left is an angiogram, which I still need to schedule, now that I think of it.

Honestly, at this point, unless it's something I need to worry about causing another stroke, I don't care what caused the first one. I'm on a preventative regimen of low-dose aspirin and Lipitor. I'm re-tooling my diet and making excellent promises concerning being more active--ones I will eventually follow through with when I can get myself to start going to bed at a reasonable hour and stop sleeping away my pre-work exercise time.

I do wish, however, that I had gone to the ER each time I had an "episode." If the initial ones were TIAs, I could have gone on a regimen and possibly prevented the actual stroke. If one of the earlier ones was the actual stroke, I could have started this medical "who dunnit" journey much earlier, which means I might have some answers by now; "we can't tell what caused it" counts as an answer. My neurologist also reiterated how VERY, VERY LUCKY I am that I don't have any major ill effects from the stroke. I mean, I think that seeing that white spot of my brain that's either dead or damaged on the MRI is a "major" effect, but hey, I don't have a medical degree.

Various friends have reached out to me, telling me about their strokes--one friend had one when she was 19! A friend, who is younger than I am, has had two that she and her medical team eventually chalked up to stress. Basically, you are never too young to have a stroke, so if you start experiencing stroke-like symptoms, don't be like me and think it couldn't possibly be a stroke; GO TO THE ER.