A stroke at 27? I never expected it.

This whole time, I was aware I had a brain injury, and I had accepted it. It was, put plainly – an aneurysm. It was only yesterday, however, did I realise I had a stroke. I am still in shock, to be honest. Think about it. You hear of strokes happening to older adults. Those who were stressed, over 80, did not sleep correctly, etc. But, in my mind, it definitely didn’t occur to young people. So what the hell happened in my case?!

Stroke vs Aneurysm

Being the lovely person I am, I decided to be an anonymous patient for the stroke research team at Kings College Hospital. They were planning to use my case (along with others) to see how I have been affected post-injury. The conversation was great. I enjoyed it. The only bit that stood out to me most was when the lady kept referring to the incident as:- “your stroke”.

The number of times I wanted to correct this woman, but I thought, ‘she is the Dr; who am I to disobey her words’ LOL. As soon as I left the conversation, I decided to decipher between the two. I had to do some research as surely she got it mixed up!

• A stroke occurs when a ruptured blood vessel in the brain or blood supply to the brain has been blocked. 
• An aneurysm is the result of a weakened artery wall.

What I found essentially put me in the middle. One of the arteries in my brain burst, causing the bleeding there – a pinch of each side. I will not lie; I would rather call it a ‘brain injury or a brain aneurysm’, not a stroke. That word triggers me for some reason, so I prefer to keep that word out of my ‘self-referral’ vocabulary.

Honestly, I still don’t understand what happened in my case. I wasn’t a smoker. I didn’t have diabetes, high blood pressure and the rest, so as Cardi said, “WHAT WAS THE REASON?!’. It is not even like the doctors told me much information post the incident, only that my artery was weak and burst. Alright mate, thanks for the basic information I got – cheers!

Realisation

In Hindsight, I have to be honest with the situation. I woke up from a coma, unable to use my right side. I was unable to speak coherently. I ended up having seizures after – I literally had to relearn all of that, and in some aspects, I am stuck with some of those changes. These are the symptoms and repercussions of having a stroke.

Yes, I said it. I had a stroke.

It truly amazes me how much our bodies go through to keep up going, and in my case, it clearly had enough of the internal struggles (which I had no clue about) before the injury.

Anyways, I need to remember that I am still a baby in this new world. It will be five years in October, and every day I wake up and go to sleep and wake up to see the next day – I am forever grateful!

I am still learning a lot. I have overcome some major challenging bits, and there are still some aspects I don’t know about yet that may come.

All I know is – “It is well”.