Today probably would have passed just like any other day and I would have gone through it without giving it much thought if it wasn’t for the reminder from Jen. This was no ordinary day for her but a day to breathe a huge sigh of relief. As she wrote,

Whew.

Did you hear that?

That sound was my whole body exhaling.

Truth be told I’ve been holding my breath for the last five years.

We’ve reached a milestone around here and it’s reason for us to celebrate.

My husband had a stroke at the age of 34 exactly five years ago.

Whenever he talks to doctors they ask, “So when exactly did you have this stroke?”

My husband hums and haws and mentions something about late 2008.

I allow him to finish and then say, “It was August 2, 2007. It happened around 9:30 AM. I was wearing a black skirt and green skirt when I got the call. I had a two year old and a five year old at the time.”

She’s right of course, for some reason I can never recall the exact date when asked and I always feel really stupid that it’s not something that comes right off my tongue. This is a huge life altering event and I can never remember the date it happened. I may not remember the exact day but I do remember how it happened.

I had finished my morning swim at the gym which consisted of a hard 100 free for time. At the time I was getting ready to complete the US Masters Nationals that were being held in Austin and I was in my taper. (When you transition from going longer workouts to shorter  faster stuff to get ready to race.) After warming down I took a shower, made my way over to the sinks and started shaving.

I had just started when I had what I can best describe as a sudden massive headache. For a short period of time I lost my sight and couldn’t see anything and it sounded like my whole head was buzzing. It’s really hard to describe what the sound was exactly like other then it took over my whole head and I couldn’t hear anything around me. Fortunately I didn’t lose my balance or fall down.

Things started to come back in focus and the buzzing in my head slowly started to go away and I remember thinking “Thank God, that’s over, wow, was that ever weird.” I looked down at my hand holding the razor and thought I was going to start shaving again but the razor was positioned really awkwardly in my hand and was starting to slip out of my grasp. I realized at this point I had absolutely no feeling in my arm and no control over what it was doing and watched the razor fall helplessly into the sink.

My vision was still not 100 percent and things seemed horribly out of perspective and it felt as if I was watching a movie and it wasn’t really happening to me. I sat down on one of the benches by the lockers for a while since I started feeling a little unsteady and after a couple of minutes I started to feel better.

I kept thinking to myself that I have to finish shaving. Half my face is still covered in shaving cream and I’m going to look really silly if I can’t get the other half done. I went back to the sink and started to shave when it happened again.

It wasn’t quite a severe as the first time if that’s the right way to describe it since I didn’t have the same degree of vision loss but I lost control of my arm again and watched helplessly as the razor fell back into the sink.

Somehow I managed to finish the job, get dressed, and then if you can believe this, I drove myself to work. To this day I’m not really sure why I did that instead of going to the hospital. After about 20 minutes of trying to get through email I knew something was not right. My arm felt too heavy for my body and I had a really hard time controlling the mouse and couldn’t get it to where I wanted it to. I called my doctor’s office and described what had happened over the phone to the nurse and asked what I should do. She told me to hold and a short time later the doctor came on the phone and said “Get yourself to a hospital immediately. Don’t drive yourself, find someone to take you, go now. Tell them you’ve had a stroke. I’m calling now and they will be expecting you.”

I called Jen while I was on the way and I’m pretty sure that’s when things went bad for her.

At the hospital they took me right back to the emergency room and started working me over. The test I remember the most was what I call the standard stroke test. Stick out your tongue, squeeze your left hand, squeeze your right hand, push with your left leg, push with your right leg, who’s the President, what’s today’s date, when were you born… I could answer all the questions fine but when I did the squeeze and push tests it was obvious that my whole right side was very weak.

I stayed in the hospital for a week for more tests, MRI’s, blood work, ultra sounds, you name it, I had it done. I was put on the stroke floor, given the low salt, low fat, heart healthy diet, categorized as a fall risk (which means I couldn’t get out of bed to pee without supervision), and to top it off I was the youngest person there by about 40 years. I lost count of how many doctors and nurses stuck there head in and said “Oh, you’re the young guy.” Ya, thanks..

Five years later I’m thankful I don’t have any lasting physical effects and I’m able to enjoy playing with my kids, watching them grow up, and knowing that things could have turned out much differently.