Hello everyone, hope you're doing well.

My name is Virginie, I'm 28 year old. I've lived in the US for 6 years now, coming from Paris. I went to do a Masters in Louisville KY coming directly from France. That was quite a big adjustment. Now I'm in Amherst, MA in my fourth year of my PhD.

I had my stroke at the end of my first year, a month after our written exams luckily since my memory totally went down. I never thought I had a stroke because, hey I'm only 25. So when I went to the hospital, the nurses were really nice to me. I didn't understand when the cardiologist came to see me, but turned out I had a PFO which must have caused the stroke. That got closed in Children's hospital Boston, and again I was really impressed with the nurses. Even thought of going to nursing school.

Now I'm left with left sided weakness that I'm working hard to get stronger by horse riding and hiking with the dog. For some weird reason I also get seizures in some cases, mostly after anesthesia, I totally freaked the cardiac surgeon in the recovery room when I had my first seizure. Since then I had 10 of them, but besides wiping my memory out for a while they're no big deal. At least I sleep well afterwards. All my friends in lab know about it so the one time it happened in the lab, they didn't freak out in their turn.

Personal life: I'm single, and was single when I had my stroke. I found it is hard for a lot of men to deal with me, because I have up and downs depending of whether I'm in pain or if I had a set back in therapy or just because I'm now pretty well aware of my own mortality and most people my age don't want to think about it.

I live with my dog Kali and my cat Azabel and have now a roomate Holly and we get pretty well along. She gets a kick at understanding my pronounciation of words once in a while.

I still need to get that appointment for the sleep study, don't have a cell phone so it makes it hard to call since the lab doesn't have long distance calls.

Need to get back to work.

Ciao