This is why I wear red today

Today I wear red in support of the American Heart Association’s national movement to end heart disease and stroke in women.

This is important to me because I lost my grandmother to a stroke when I was 16.  She was 68 years old when it happened.  She was an older woman, yes, but still too young  to die, in my opinion.  Her sister had a stroke as well.  She was even younger than my grandmother when it happened.  It did not kill her, but she was robbed of her ability to speak and walk and had to learn how to do just about everything again.

What happened to my great-aunt and grandmother really scared me, and I was going to make sure I didn’t suffer the same fate.  My grandmother was very overweight her whole life.  I figured if I tried to maintain a healthy weight, I would not suffer the same fate.  My great-aunt was a smoker.  I figured it I didn’t smoke, I wouldn’t suffer the same fate.  I was wrong.  Unfortunately, I would suffer the same fate, and at a much younger age.

On Sunday, August 9, 2009, I had a stroke. An ischemic, embolic stroke.  I was 43 years old.  It happened only 10 days after Owen was born.  I don’t remember much of anything leading up to it.  The first thing I recall is being in the basement at my home, sitting on the couch, with paramedics asking me questions I couldn’t answer.  Very simple questions I should have been able to answer with ease.  I also remember my right arm and leg feeling like dead hunks of meat.  When the paramedics asked me to get up, I couldn’t.  I remember going to the hospital and having an MRI.  It was after this that I was told I had a stroke.  I thought they were kidding.  That can’t be true!  I was in excellent health and always had been.  There must be some mistake.

I spent the next several days in the hospital following the event while tests were run to determine the cause.  They could not definitively tell me why.  The only risk factor I had was having recently given birth.  To me, not knowing why it happened was scarier than knowing why.  They sent me home with instructions to take an aspirin a day.  To me, that sounded akin to rubbing some dirt on it.  I know aspirin can thin your blood, and thinner blood does not have a tendency to clot as much, hence lowering the risk of a blood clot forming and another event.  I was thankful that I didn’t have to be on a stronger blood thinning medication, but I still I couldn’t help wondering if it might happen again.  For quite awhile afterwards, I was afraid to go to sleep, thinking I might not wake up again.

While I was certainly unlucky to have had this happen to me in the first place, I was damn lucky to have survived it with few lingering issues.  Because of the location of the brain where the stroke hit, I do have permanent visual issues.  I do also have some random numbness on the right side of my body.  Other than that, I was very lucky.  I have been able to go on and resume my life pretty much as it had been pre-stroke.  In fact, I think I’ve maybe become stronger.  Although I ran prior to the stroke, it was not until afterwards that I tried to conquer a half marathon.  I’ve now got 11 under my belt.  I also tried to conquer a marathon.  I did, and then did another one.

So today, I wear red to celebrate my victory, and to celebrate others who have survived stroke and heart disease.  I also wear red in memory of those like my great-aunt, grandmother who weren’t so lucky.