I’ve been asked several times now how I knew I was having a stroke and what it felt like. I think people are worried that they might have one themselves and wanted to know what it was like. I wish I had recognized it sooner but my brain was not working correctly at the time. I was in denial. My brain was working just fine, as far as I could tell.

Wednesday February 28, 2024. I woke up in bed alone. Mary was getting out of the hospital today and I would be picking her up and taking care of her — there are lots of reasons to be short of breath, and she found some.

But when I woke up I was very uncommonly dizzy. I also had to pee, so I tried getting up to go to the bathroom, only a few feet away. Bad idea. Dizzy and nauseous. I held onto the dresser, knocked a few things off the desk, went gently down to the floor and crawled to the toilet to throw up. Terribly severe motion sickness. I managed to do my thing there at the toilet, then got back on the floor to throw up some more. Just moving my eyes made me nauseous.

“Oh, this will pass soon enough.” No, I wasn’t in my right mind. After a bit of waiting to settle the nausea, I decided going back to bed would fix everything in a few minutes. It was a struggle, but I managed to crawl back to the bed. It took me four tries to get back up on it. That should have been another clue. I fell back asleep. Sure, a few minutes more would fix everything. That was about 7:00 am. Five hours later I woke up to knocking on the back door.

Phone? In the other room charging up. Doors? Locked for the night. It was daughter Kelly wondering where I was and why I wasn’t at the hospital to pick up Mary. She eventually found where we keep the secret key and let herself in.

Meanwhile I crawled out of bed again, still very dizzy and nauseous, and made it back to throw up some more. Kelly found me on the floor by the toilet, too dizzy to get up. She had the presence of mind to quickly call 911 and the ambulance was there in two minutes. I was counting. She got me some pants and opened the house for them.

They helped me out — mostly they carried me out, hands under my armpits. I could kind of walk but I was unsteady and unbalanced. They were very good at their job. Kelly took care of closing up the house.

In the hospital they did a ton of tests and poked at me a lot. Push your feet against my hands. Smile for me. Squeeze my hands. Follow this light with your eyes. Hold still while we put you into this machine to scan your head and neck.

It was a relatively minor stroke. A blood clot had lodged on the right side of my cerebellum. As it turns out, that affected the right side of my body, not the left side like most strokes would do. The cerebellum is where you get fine motor skills and balance and speech. It affected my balance, which is why I was so dizzy. It also took away my nice-enough handwriting, my typing, piano playing, drawing, and made speech difficult and halting. Singing was still okay, if I didn’t try to get words out too fast.

They put me on blood thinners and started me healing up. I learned new medical terms.

Neuroplasticity is where your brain is very good at rewiring itself to get around damage. It is still at work in my head.

Ataxic Dysarthria is where you can’t get words out. I’m still working on that.

Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) is a tiny hole in your heart that occasionally can let blood clots get through to the wrong side and up to your brain. Everyone has this hole when they’re born, and it heals over in 75% of us. Apparently not in me.

After a few days in the hospital they discharged me to the Portage County Health Care Center to start my rehab. I can’t say enough good things about them. The staff there were excellent and caring and good at their jobs.

Since then all my therapists have fired me — well, the correct term is “discharged.” They got me started on handwriting, balance, running again, fine motor skills, speech. They even got me started back on piano. Typing is getting better. I write this on June 10, and I’m still not as fast as I used to be but it is no longer an onerous chore to type. More of an annoyance that can be worked through.

I’m back running, back up to my usual 3 miles in the morning, although I’ve apparently lost a minute-per-mile somewhere along here. I’m working on my piano — fast passages are problematic but usually yield to practice practice practice. Fine motor skills, arggh.

Why did this happen? I had no medical issues or history that would point to a stroke. Well, I fell down on my run the Thursday before my stroke and hit the ground hard enough to trigger the “hard fall” warning in my watch. It offered to call 911 for me, but I said no. My cardiologist Dr Lane said it was possible that that could have bumped a clot loose that got through my PFO and up to my brain. They’re going to check it out and possibly close that hole later this summer.

September 23, 2024 update

My cardiologist did indeed check me out and she closed up my PFO on August 6. My heart was not all that pleased with the intrusion. They went through my femoral vein into my beating heart and maneuvered a couple of quarter-sized plates around the hole and tied them together. The bruises faded and a month later I was all healed up.

Mostly. They tell me I may never get back 100% of my physical ability. My piano playing is coming along nicely. It’s more taxing than the effortless flow I had before but it’s getting there. Handwriting is now readable, although still cramped. Typing is coming along too. Drawing style is changed a bit but it’s back. Speaking is better every day, as is balance.

So it’s a slow gradual improvement. I’ll take it, considering how bad it could have been.