First, i have to say thank you to all of those individuals and survivors that have made this forum what it is and for the ongoing source of information and support that it provides. I am humbled and grateful...

I thought i would start this be copying my introduction to strokenet as a newcomer

Posted 02 November 2014 - 02:37 PM

Hello, my name is Dean. I’m a newbie but I have followed this board for a while now and have found it very helpful. Why am I just making my first post? I don’t really know…. Desperation maybe and I don’t really know how to tell my story. So, perhaps I’ll start from the beginning if that’s okay and I hope you all will forgive me if it’s a little disjointed.

In march of 2013 I woke one day feeling a little weird which really didn’t bother me and I had just finished a 52 hour shift in 3 days. That day I was drywalling my living room and I found myself a little unsteady and had a hard time measuring the drywall. I took several breaks and only managed to get 2 pieces installed. The next day I found I had the same problem and put it down to tiredness due to the long shift I had put in (I am/was a granite installer). I decided that if I wasn’t right the next day I would go to the hospital.

The next morning when I woke I still didn’t feel right and took myself to emergency. Somewhere… in the back of my mind I thought stroke, but it really didn’t sink in. When I got to emergency the triage nurse asked me what was wrong and I couldn’t speak. I managed to garble out that something was wrong. Because I was mobile I suppose, she told me to have a seat in the waiting room. Six hours later I was moved to a treatment room and a nurse took blood work. A couple of hours after that I was seen by a doctor and it was he, after hearing my speech, difficulty with it, that ordered a ct-scan and a couple of hours after that the doctor told me that I had suffered a stroke and would be seen by the attending neurlologist. Two hours later the neurologist confirmed that I had a stroke and that I should take a couple of weeks off. He said that it was likely due to high blood pressure, prescribed ramapril and aspirin and told me to book an appointment with his office in 3 months and that I would recover from this. I called my daughter for a ride home and left the hospital 14 hours later. Looking back, i guess if i had talked to someone the previous days, i would have known that something was wrong when i couldn't speak.

In the following days I noticed many things…. I could barely talk, when I drank something I would almost always drool, I had very poor control over my bladder, I couldn’t type or for the life of me remember passwords. Nor could I hit the right buttons on the remote control and all in all I was very clumsy. Except for these things and some pain in my right side I felt ok and being that I work for myself I went back to work 5 days later.

It was a struggle, things took me three times longer to get a job done than it did before and took 10 times more energy. I definitely struggled over the next 3 months but being self employed I could wiggle my schedule and manage about 30 hours a week which was enough to keep the lights on. When I saw the neurologist again 3 months later I told him of the growing right side pain (head to toe) and a wacky sleep routine that got me about 4 hours a night and the ramapril seemed to be working but I felt worse than I did immediately after the stroke, my speech was still poor. He gave me a new med for blood pressure and said the pain was likely just arthritis which, considering that I had a stroke, I would be more sensitive to. As for sleep he thought it was due to depression and prescribed remeron because it has a sedating effect. I was to see him again in 6 month and off I went….

I had a very bad reaction to the new blood pressure med or the remeron as I was barely able to get through a four hour day and still lift my feet. In November or December I remember thinking that I can’t cope like this and called to make an appointment with the neurologist to address the problems I was having. I was told by his receptionist to call my GP. I did so and my GP changed my bp med and gave me a different antidepressant. He also gave me naproxen for the pain and swelling in my legs. We went through this same routine in February as nothing was getting better. Finally my symptoms got so bad, especially the right side pain that I went to the ER again and I told them I thought I was having another stroke. They did all the blood work and checked all my vitals and said they weren’t sure so booked me for an appointment with their neurologist at the hospital stroke clinic the next day and sent me home.

I met with the new neurologist and he ordered a full battery of test including a MRI, halter monitor, echocardiogram etc. The MRI was received within a week and showed that I had had 3 strokes. A basal ganglia stroke, one within the supratentoriun (this might have been multiple smaller strokes), and another in the midbrain, and still I am walking and talking…. The new doctor immediately referred me to the Acquired Brain Injury Unit and a rehabilitation program and have been receiving counseling, assessments, and therapy since June 2014. They all helped me to understand that I wasn’t going crazy (I honestly thought I was).

I april I declared bankruptcy, closed my business, and took a job with one of my clients who was sympathetic to my medical situation allowing me to work reduced and very irregular hours which I managed until early this month at which time I had to, out of sheer exhaustion, bend to the will of my therapists and take 3 months sickness leave (for which I haven’t received any funds yet and am a little worried). I was beat

On October 21 I saw the neurologist again and he had the results of my echocardiogram which showed that I have an enlarged atrium and could possibly be the source of the blood clots responsible for my strokes (they were all ischemic). He wants to use a relatively new technique called an Insertional Cardiac Monitor which is placed in my chest and which records heart irregularities for a period of 1-3 months. I guess the idea is to see if I suffer from atrial fibrillation which is a suspected cause of blood clots (if any one has any experience with this I would be glad to hear it). I await contact from the cardiologist….

So here I am today, 3 weeks of doing relatively nothing, waiting to see if I will regain any of my former self and not feeling very confident. My therapists are very compassionate but can’t really relate to my experience and I am left wondering about the future…, and still feeling like I am going a little crazy because my brain nor body are the same anymore. There is no colour to life and a lot of axiety. Anyway, I am grateful for this board and to finally tell a bit of my story. I know it’s not unique, and I hope I haven’t sounded whiney…, and thanks for the opportunity to be so long-winded. Cheers.

Dean