On January 24th, 2003, the day started out normal, and I was off to the church to work. I had resigned from Northwest Airlines and started working at our church 3 weeks prior to this day. In the afternoon, I started feeling funny. Soon, my arm and leg on the left side went numb. At the age of 29, I suffered a massive stroke. My parents had moved to MN from TX to be closer to us and were just a few minutes away from the church. Although I couldn't speak, I knew my Mom was there before I lost consciousness. I was rushed to the hospital and they determined the problem right away. I had had a bleeding stroke.
There are two types of bleeding strokes. The first one, which is the one I suffered from, is called an intracerebral hemorrhage. This is when blood vessels inside the brain bursts and bleeds in the brain. I had a malformation of blood vessels on the right side of my brain that was never detected. The amount of blood on the right side of my brain when the stroke happened was the size of a fist. With the second type of stroke, a blood vessel breaks and bleeds into the space between the brain and the skull. The type of stroke I had accounts for only 13% of all strokes. Research shows that my type of stroke is the most lethal and hard to recover from and result in death as much as half the time. Only about a fifth of those who survive function independently. I am so blessed to be where I am in my recovery today!
On the evening of January 24th, I went through emergency brain surgery to stop the bleeding. I was in a drug induced coma for 17 days. When I woke up, I had lost all function on my left side. So we started from the beginning. First we learned to sit up and balance and then kept working on it till I could eventually walk with lots of assistance. I went to rehab to start working for a month. On February 26th, I had my next brain surgery to remove the malformation. The surgery was successful and there was not a chance of another stroke. Now I just had to work hard on therapy and see what I could get back. I came home at the end of March.
