The last picture before my stroke. This was three days prior and I was heading to karate and my daughter, Savannah was heading to the prom. A few days later, our world was flipped upside down when I had an ischemic stroke. Martial arts gave me a focus on recovery and because it’s as mental as physical, my body and brain were made stronger.

If you see red ribbons adorning different areas in May, they represent Stroke Awareness Month. Amittedly, this is one hits close to home for me. Strokes and brain anuyruems have taken too many of my aunts from this world and I am in fact, a stroke survivor.

If you learn anything from these missives I write, learn this: strokes are not for “old” people, or unhealthy people. I was 42 when I had mine and am considered a young strokie. I’m in a survivor care group on Facebook and easily the most heart-wrenching posts come from mother’s whose teenager, pre-teen or even infant had a stroke. Unfortunately, there are many of those. According to the American Stroke Association, strokes are one of the top 10 causes of death in children. The signs are the same and you should know them.

ASA promotes F.A.S.T. to help people see the signs.

F: face drooping

A: arm weakness

S: speech difficulty

T: time to call 911

These are very important, but there are also additional warning signs in both children and adults.

Additional Warning Signs in Children:

• Sudden severe headache, especially with vomiting and sleepiness
• Sudden numbness or weakness on one side of the body (face, arm and/or leg)
• Sudden confusion, difficulty speaking or understanding others
• Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
• Sudden difficulty walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination
• New onset of seizures, usually on one side of the body

If it looks or feels like a stroke, it may be one.

I can only speak of my experience and I can also tell you, my husband and I did everything WRONG. My recovery is simply the grace of God.

I woke up on the morning of April 21, 2015 ready to get to my job as a speech therapist assistant in an elementary school. I felt foggy and when I walked toward my bathroom, I ended up at my closet. Something strong was in bloom, so I attributed the fog to allergies or maybe a migraine.

My husband was in the shower and I told him I didn’t feel well and was going to lay down for a few more minutes. He never saw me but said my speaking was fine.

Remember when I said I was working as a speech therapist? I would die before I showed any speech impediment. My speech was slow, but impeccable. I laid back
down and fell asleep. I woke up 12 hours later to the realization that I had not picked

“Did you take a nap after work?” he asked.

“I never went to work,” I admitted.I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, but I do remember the concern in my husband’s voice as he assured me he had the girls.

That should have been clue number six, but we still missed it. He brought our girls home, made dinner and tried to get me to the table. I ate three bites. Chewing robbed my waning energy. I just wanted to sleep.

To be fair, my husband at this point wanted to take me to the ER, but I convinced him this was just a bad migraine. I knew the stroke signs — I lost 3 aunts to them. I knew my family history, but here’s the thing: my brain was damaged, so all that information was inaccessible and I was young.

So, we didn’t go. The next morning, he pushed the girls out the door to school, helped me dress and took me to my doctor.

My (now ex-) doctor promptly diagnosed me with vertigo but sent me to the hospital for tests and scans.

That’s where the truth was revealed. I had an ischemic (blockage) stroke in my thalamus. It took me six months to remember this critical point of information. The other type of stroke is hemorrhagic (bleed).

Now, for those who don’t know, the thalamus is the communication center of the brain. If the brain needs to tell the muscles to move, it goes through the thalamus. If your body needs to send a message to the brain, it goes through the thalamus. It handles most of the sensory transmissions, except smell. The thalamus also helps control sleep. It’s divided into two hemispheres and about a third of mine, spread over both hemispheres was damaged.

My neurologist told me and my husband two very important things.

The first was that even though my stroke was considered “mild” it would take at least a year to fully recover. Stroke recover is a marathon. Sometimes there are spurts of recovery and sometime it feels you are at a standstill. The reality is it took 18-months to mostly recover and five years for me to say I’m at 95-percent pre-stroke levels on my best days. My worse days I’m at about 70-percent. I’m doing everything I did pre-stroke and I’m okay with my deficits.

The second thing was sleep is a strokie’s best medicine. While awake, your brain has to work crazy hard. It processes all the sights, sounds, smells, movement. It controls involuntary movements like breathing and blinking. It orchestrates digestion and the sensations of hunger and fullness. When you have brain damage, your brain has to reroute jobs to other parts of the brain, which then end up pulling double duty–meaning they get tired quicker.

When you sleep, the brain merely keeps you breathing and heart pumping. This gives it time to heal. It will repair the disrupted or damaged pathways or create new ones, making the new pathways stronger. In the weeks after my stroke, I slept 20 hours a day.

In my four waking hours, which were not consecutive, I tried watching television but couldn’t follow the dialogue. I’d read, but forget what I’d just read. So, I did suduko. I hate suduko. With.A.Passion. But I did it. The easy ones took me three to four days to complete. I can complete them much quicker and they helped me immensely. I still hate it though.

Insurance would only pay for 10 visits to physical therapy, so I told my PT I’d come once a week and to give me a routine to do at home. My goal was to be able to go back to karate. Pre-stroke, I desperately wanted to make third-degree black belt by the end of the year.

Gradually, I could stay awake longer and longer. I could walk further and further. In 12 weeks, I was able to start driving and I went to karate. My dojo family had been amazing, bringing food for my family, praying and checking up on me. My first night at class, I  lasted five whole minutes. The next time, I lasted seven. I can now attend two classes in a row.

I still have issues most can’t see. I have post-stroke fatigue, similar to chronic fatigue. My short term memory still gets holes in it. I lost my obsession with reading. I didn’t remember dreams for years. I lost my enjoyment of cooking. I don’t focus on the loses, though. So many have lost alot more than I have.

What I didn’t realize was while I had the stroke, my family suffered from it too. It was right before my oldest graduated from high school and those joyful times, I barely remember. My daughters took over running the house and helping on the farm. They still handle menu planning and grocery shopping. Despite my recovery, I’m not the wife or mother they used to have and I didn’t realize it. They had to grieve that lost and I wasn’t’ even aware they had lost anything.

Until last year. Yes,four years after the initial stroke, I started experiencing hemiplegic migraines, which mimic strokes. While discussing this with my neurologist, the most amazing Dr. Meghan Stevens at Erlanger, the petite doctor sucker punched me with one simple phrase that came up almost casually in conversation. She said “part of your brain is dead…” there was more to the conversation but I don’t remember it.

Walking out of Erlanger, I was almost in tears. I looked at my husband. “Did you know part of my brain is dead?”

“I’ve known this for four years.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You knew.”

“But, I didn’t know-know. Hearing it makes it real. It wasn’t real before.”

Four years after my stroke, I actually grieved.The hard work was done and could no longer distract me and it hurt.

I hope sharing my story helps. Strokes hit at any age. They can be mild to fatal. I hope if you are facing this challenge, either personally or as a loved one, you find support somewhere-from survivors, to your church, or friends. There are many support groups online and are a wealth of information and encouragement. My off-beat sense of humor-yes, I make fun of my deficits, has helped me navigate this  road. It also puts others at ease. I’m comfortable with the knowledge. I could have another one, but I don’t worry about it since it’s nothing I can prevent. I can only try to restack the deck and hope I don’t get dealt that card.

https://www.stroke.org/en/about-stroke/stroke-in-children/pediatric-stroke-infographic