Nurse's Mini Stroke Came With No Warning - If It Happens To You, Act Quickly

and it's not restricted to only the elderly.
this very thing happened to a 31yo cna that i worked with.
very scary.

thank you, gentle.

leslie

I never hear anyone talk about the symptoms of a tia or stroke in the brain stem or the cerebellum. They can some times be very different from what we think of as typical stroke symptoms and harder to recognize.

Great article, thanks for posting this! My dad has atrial fibrillation and is on coumadin because of the stroke risk, so I'm always interested in learning more about the signs and symptoms of a stroke. We actually had a meeting for the volunteer program that I'm in, and we had a nurse give a presentation on strokes. I was shocked to hear that she's had patients in their 20s and 30s who have had strokes..... I never realized that you can get a stroke this young!

I was 48 when I had what I've always suspected was a mild stroke.

I'd gone home from work with what I thought was a migraine headache, but shortly after I lay down in bed my thoughts became scrambled and I felt like I was trying to move my arms through quicksand. I tried to speak out loud and couldn't. I had enough brain power to determine that I was oriented to self and place, but I stumbled on the year.......I kept thinking 2027, 2207, 2720, but not 2007.

That was when I knew I was in trouble, but there was no one else at home and I couldn't get up to look for my cell phone to dial 911. In fact, I couldn't even think of the item I needed to call an ambulance. So I closed my eyes and went to sleep..........and when I woke up, I was OK again. I felt weak and definitely shaken up, but the headache was gone and everything worked normally.

I told my PCP about it the next day, but he didn't put much stock in my self-diagnosis, only said he thought I'd had an 'atypical' migraine. Maybe I did; at any rate, I'll probably never know for sure because he didn't order a CT or MRI. All I know is, if I saw the symptoms I experienced in another person, I'd have been on the phone to EMS in a New York minute.

I had one in 97. Should'a quit work right then. The stabilized me and then let me DRIVE HOME.

Thought I would respond to this since it happened to me. At 28 with no prior history and normally very low blood pressure I had either a TIA or small stroke. It started early in the morning with a headache (I NEVER have headaches). By 10:30am I was virtually blind with pain, had 0 equilibrium, could not hear out of my left ear and looked like I had bells palsy. My husband took me to the hospital where they did a spinal and found blood in the fluid. This was 25 years ago and they took a wait and see attitude. The pain subsided by the next day but I was left with 6 months of rehab and a line that goes right down the center of my body with a marked loss of sensitivity. I cannot detect pain on my left side and when I am tired my face and hand don't function at full capacity but I count myself fortunate. It could have been much worse. Today I would have reacted more quickly and perhaps would have had no residual affect.

i'm so sorry, gentle.
i hope life takes a better turn for you.

leslie

To VivaLasViejas,

It’s none of my business, but considering the symptoms that you described, I think you should follow up, and go to a stroke specialist - even if this happened a while ago (it sounds like 2 years?).

There’s no reason that this couldn’t have been a stroke pre-cursor, even if your PCP doesn’t think so. If he turns out to be wrong, and you have a full-blown stroke some day that you could have avoided, he will shrug and say, “That’s a shame.”

You’re the one who will pay the price for his inaction, not him.


To Gentlegiver,

Hang in there. I wish you all the best.

- Jon