“Doctors told me I’d most likely never run again, but I proved them wrong.” 🙌
I certainly didn’t fit the classic profile of the aging stroke victim. At the time of my brain explosion, I was 38. I’d run eight half-marathons and had a diet and exercise regimen that helped me cross those finish lines. But I also had an intense job that involved booking groups—including NBA teams—into hotels in San Francisco. That’s what I was doing at 2 a.m. on the Friday before Christmas in 2013, welcoming the Los Angeles Lakers to their hotel.
I dragged my nonfunctioning leg into the bathroom and saw in the mirror that the right side of my face was drooping. I grabbed my phone and Googled “signs of stroke,” and the American Heart Association site popped up, showing the acronym FAST: F for Facial drooping, A for Arm weakness, S for Speech difficulty, and T, Time to call 911, even if only one of those symptoms is present. I was full-on with two of them and would soon experience the third .
The next morning in the hospital, I had to call a friend to tell her I would not be able to make her wedding. It brought home the reality of my new status in life and brought a new gusher of tears. When I got off, my elderly roommate called out, right through the privacy screen: “Young lady! You listen to me. Don’t you do what I did after I had my stroke, many years ago. You need to stay positive. The first two weeks are critical.
My care team’s best guess as to the cause of my stroke was stress-related hypertension. They put me on blood-pressure and cholesterol-lowering meds, and I began taking a baby aspirin every day. A nutritionist advised me to focus on “brain foods” with healthy fats, antioxidants, and anti-inflammatories, including walnuts, blueberries, salmon, and avocado as well as lean, organic protein and organic produce, and to avoid inflammatory pesticides and chemicals.
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