Health-care professional Kathryn Herridge was accustomed to nursing stroke patients. But at age 39 she never imagined that she'd be joining them, or that her own denial that she was having a stroke would lead to delays that would place her beyond the reach of the best treatment. Yet that's exactly what happened over a 24-hour period last year.
“At work, in the afternoon,&" says Kathryn, “I developed the worst headache of my life.&" A severe or unusual headache is a major symptom of stroke. The window of opportunity to get the best treatment for stroke is three hours. Kathryn, who lives alone, did the worst thing she could have done. Instead of calling 911, she went home and fell asleep on the couch.
State of denial
At some time in the evening she staggered into bed, waking up with her alarm as usual in the morning. She got out of bed and felt dizzy, and fell down several times while trying to get ready for work. “Even then I was in a state of denial,&" she says. When she didn't show up for work, a colleague phoned and, hearing Kathryn slur her words, immediately called an ambulance.
Kathryn had suffered a stroke caused by a blood clot in her brain. But because about 16 hours had elapsed since the onset of symptoms, she was too late to receive clot-busting therapy, which could have lessened the damage to her brain.
Why me?
She was lucky to have survived. But the left side of her body showed signs of paralysis and she had to undergo months of arduous rehab therapy. She was also left with some profound changes in her abilities. “I have a shorter attention span, a shorter memory and when I'm tired I sometimes have problems with my speech,&" she says. More than a year later, she's finally strong enough to be able to go back to work, but she will be on blood-thinning drugs for the rest of her life.
“Sometimes I ask myself, Why me?&" says Kathryn. “But none of us is immortal, and I actually had significant risk factors. There was a family history of stroke on my mother's side, I was overweight, I had high blood pressure, I was quite inactive, and I was on a birth control pill.&"
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