Day 3- what I learned from my mom’s stroke

Feb 16, 2012 by Lisa Renee Jones

Hi all–

I want to take a few minutes to write about knowing the risks of a stroke.

 

There are two types of strokes –

 

1- A clot – this kind you have 3 hours to get medicine or the chances of recovery are near zero

 

2-Hemorrhagic — this can be a slow or fast bleed. Thankfully my mom had a slow bleed because she, and everyone around her, ignored her symptoms. But my uncle has a friend who had a slow bleed and he still died. He put it off and ignored the symptoms and he died. His wife went to the store to get headache medicine. When she got back he was passed out and even at the hospital they said he’d be okay. A day later it got bigger and he died.

What I saw that worried me:

-Funky emails with mispelled words from my mom

-She spoke like concrete was in her words

-She said she had random symptoms that she blamed on something else. She couldn’t get her contact out so that had to be why her eyes were off. No. She couldn’t contorl her hands — also what impacted her typing which she blamed on her eyes too. She felt a numb hand with the phone in it. She blamed

her carpel tunnel. Together these things said stroke to me but my gut said it too. I KNEW and I was willing to be the butt of a joke or two if I was wrong.

 

Strokes happen at all ages for crazy reasons. The guy who played Hercules had a stroke at a young age. It was caused by an aneurism in his arm. He too, ignored it and blamed other things.

Don’t ignore symptoms. Be paranoid. Be the butt of a joke. Piss someone off.

TIME is everything. In the clotting one — the stroke specialist stressed the 3 hours as crucial.

 

Lisa