A novella of my history with this:
Feb 10, 2009, I pass out in the shower. Come to about an hour later, no voice and unable to use my right side, I can move it if I focus really hard, but for the most part, useless. Pounding gets me no attention, my attempts to call for help as my voice returns go unanswered, so I somehow manage to get the water shut off and crawl out of the tub. Improve moderately as I use my left arm to towel off and struggle into my clothes. Walking requires bracing against walls or my right leg just gives out.
Does my daughter’s father and his family notice? No. Thinking I must have just overheated as I’m prone to heat exhaustion and it was kind of a very warm shower, and pinched a nerve when I fell, and that it must not be that bad since none of the 4 adults around me notice anything off, in a fine display of my stupid stubbornness I shrug into my coat and force my feet in my shoes and drive (my 5-speed manual) the two miles to the vet office I’m working as a receptionist.
THEY notice. Immediately. But I’m stupid, and stubborn, and while I’m frustrated and scared I make a joke and get through my shift, manage to drive home afterwards, too. Have the next 4 days off, promise them that if I’m not better I’ll get seen.
Feb 14th, I’m tired of falling down the stairs, dropping things and really starting to freak out so I finally go. Does my beloved go with me when after I break down and call the GP and am told I need to go the ER NOW? no. I drive myself.
Spend Valentine’s Day alone in the hospital. Go for a cat scan, then an MRI, and then woopy from the medication they gave me before the MRI, I sit and wait, until the doctor comes in what feels like days later and standing in the doorway announces “You’ve had a stroke. We’re admitting you.”
Of course I start bawling, I was 25, convinced still of my invincibility and that while yes there is a history of stroke in my family (Oma has had several mini strokes) they were decades away if in my future at all. They had to be wrong. Call my boyfriend. He calls my parents, who call my grand parents, who come to wait with me while the paperwork is done up and I wait to be moved to my room. Feb 15th just after midnight starts one of the longest weeks of my life.
I’m not allowed out of bed for ANYTHING without the nurse, have to wear my speshul ‘falling star’ socks with the little rubber grippies on top and bottom. More brain scans, meet a cardiologist, have my entire circulatory system checked, including a very fun echo I had to be put under for. Yay T-E-E. Remember being strapped down on that table with the gag in my mouth so the equipment didn’t chip my teeth saying “This is kinky medicine” before I was knocked out.
At the end of all this, I know I have a glorious circulatory system except for the small vessels in my brain, and the most purdiful functioning heart my cardiologist has ever seen. Even if my resting heart rate is just this side of dead and was giving the nurses fits for the first two days and I have inverted T’s and downward spikes (whatever those mean) on my traces, my rhythm is good an everything looks perfect.
Start my physical therapy before discharged, what I lost wasn’t the use, just the feeling on my right side, so I now have to re learn how to ‘feel’. They’re optomistic over time some of it will come back, but in the mean time I can’t be falling over because my brain doesn’t recognize that my right foot is already bearing full weight.
(This whole time, my ex visits me ONCE, for 15 mins. My co workers saw me more! Did not help my moral through the process)
When I’m discharged, it is with the diagnosis that I have in fact had a stroke at 25, likely caused by complicated migraines compressing the already small blood vessels in my brain.
Because I’m a stubborn little git, and PT in a clinic just is not something I’ll follow through with, the therapist goes over exercises for me to do, and when I ask about using horses, he asks if it’s something I can commit to doing every day. DUH! So I go to spend a couple weeks with my parents, and starting the day after my discharge, every day Dad takes me out to the barn where my Aunt boards her horses. The acts of grooming and hand walking are to be my therapy. But I’m cautioned against hopes of riding for a long time, and that I may never be competitive again.
Bless my TWH, Tasha’s Last Tango. For 2 years he’d done nothing, not allowed any one to halter him in the pasture, and been fussy about being haltered in his stall. Shadow, the steady eddy Quarab was supposed to be my ‘therapist’, but as I’m haltering Shadow, who comes up and stands quietly but my dear sweet psychotic auction find. Dad goes to get the halter, and Tango stood like a rock with me leaning against him and while my fingers fumbled with the strap. This horse had a long rough history before us, and while he ended up being an amazing trail horse, haltering or anything involving his head had never been perfect, he never fully lost the headshy issues.
We ‘saved’ him from that auction, and he saved me back. Every day I’d go out and hobble up to the pasture with my cane, catch him, give the cane to my father and lean/hang on Tango for support. He’d get cleaned up, and then we’d walk patterns in the arena. If I got tired, I’d sit on the mounting block and he’d put his head in my lap and rest with me.
After two weeks, I was in much better spirits, and getting around much better, so I returned ‘home’ and to work. On the weekends I’d return to the barn and continue my work there.
Fast forward to the present: I have about 90% of my right side back, 40 on my bad days, and am well adapted to it. I’m the proud mama of a BLM Mustang, an 03 model OTTB and a coming 2yo Kiger TB X. I’m riding, I’m showing (and doing well! Take that doctors!)
Two days ago, it comes back. I can still manage my chores, but don’t feel safe getting in the saddle. The follow ups have lead to speculation it may have something to do with hormone fluctuations during my ‘happy time of the month’. I’ve had multiple miscarriages, ovarian cysts we have to stay ontop of as ovarian and cervical cancers also run in my family…but now I’m in a catch 22. They’re afraid to do the hysterectomy because of my having been diagnosed as having a stroke. The connection between my woman parts and the very symptomatic days is absolute, but neither side (neuro/gyno) can decide what to do at this point.
It’s frustrating, I’d been doing so well, living life full speed ahead and enjoying every up and down it threw at me because of the sense of “It can be taken away at any time” I developed after the stroke. But now I’m afraid again, I was warned I’d have good times and bad times and they couldn’t be predicted, but this is a bit much.
Need a little moral support. I haven’t faced the thought of giving up the horses for this reason, ever, not even in the beginning, but the thought is brewing deep in this dysfunctional brain of mine. On it’s own the fumbling of buckets and light objects is just annoying, and enough to keep me out of the saddle until it resolves, my mare is very kind but very green, if I can’t feel how much pressure I’m applying, that’s not very fair to her, or safe for me. Add in the chronic joint pain (blissfully mostly felt on the left, there have been ‘bonuses’ to having decreased feeling on my right side, as it’s where most of my injuries occur) I’m starting to wonder if I should let go of the dream.
