sweet peas and other things » the family behind sweet pea photography

All you have to do is have a minor stroke!

So, here’s the adventure we’ve been having the past few days… On Tuesday morning, after baking a batch of Aunt Helen’s ginger cookies (a very pleasant time and the girls enjoyed licking the batter off the spoons of course) I picked Eden up and felt kind of funny… then more funny and shaky… and I decided I better sit down on the floor in case I passed out. So Eden and I sat down and I noticed my leg was twitching a little bit, and when I started talking to Eden, I just couldn’t get the words out that I wanted to say. Averhy was in the bathroom and called to me, but when I tried to call back to her, it was like my mouth just wouldn’t make the words that my brain wanted to say. Very weird and unsettling, but it only lasted for 2 minutes, tops. So then I got up, helped Averhy in the bathroom, and put Eden down for a nap before calling the Carle Patient Advisory Nurse. A few wonderful nurses decided that I needed to see a Dr. right away (and I agreed) so they set up an appointment at 1:20. I called Sky and he came home from work to take me to the appt. and the girls out to lunch while I was there.

Got in to see the nurse at 1:30 and she finished up in a few minutes… but while I was waiting for Dr. Johnson to come in the room, I started feeling funny again… so I tried reading some things aloud – titles of books on the shelf, certificates on the wall – and I couldn’t do it! I was fumbling over words again so I called Sky and cut the lunch picnic short (he took the girls over to our neighbor’s house for the day – thanks Marilee!), and then Dr. Johnson came in the office during this episode. He did some quick neurological tests (all seemed fine, except for my speech) and sent me right down to the ER. Got admitted to the ER, Sky showed up, and by 2:20 my speech was back to about 80% normal — I was still struggling to find some words I wanted to use when I was flustered, but for the most part was okay.

It was busy in the ER, so Sky and I got to sit on a bed in the hallway (but my nurse Tiffany was excellent!) in between all of my tests… first a CAT scan, then a bunch of blood draws, then a MRI – which showed a small stroke in the left frontal lobe! Craziness! I’m just 31 and have next to no risk factors, so I have been the mystery case this week. The ER neurologist explained the possible causes and the next bunch of tests that he wanted to run over the next day, so as we waited around in the ER for a room to become available, Sky made phone calls to spread the word, ask for prayer, and get my parents down here to watch the girls. Finally made it up to a real room in the step-down unit (one step down from ICU I guess) around 8:30pm, and got to take some aspirin and Lovenox (I think) to thin my blood to prevent more blood clots, and get rid of my mild headache that I had all afternoon. Mom and Dad stopped by to check on me before going to relieve Sky of the girls, then Sky came back here to hang out until I fell asleep around midnight.

Wednesday morning, woke up feeling fine and pretty much back to normal. Through the day, I got to go through a whole bunch of interesting tests – a MRA of my brain and neck, looking for any clots or narrowing of blood vessels; a trans-esophageal echocardiogram, where the knocked me out a bit to stick a sonogram thing down my esophagus to look at my heart to see if there is a hole in my heart where a clot might’ve passed through; and then in the evening a CTA to look at my neck blood vessels again. The results? I have a little hole in my heart, that has probably been there since I was born – everyone is born with a little opening between the left and right side, but for most people it closes up on it’s own. The other tests ended up showing no problems. So I got to spend yet another night in the step-down unit, waiting to see what we’re going to do about this! Sky spend the night in the room with me, since the girls went home with my parents (thanks Mom and Dad!) so that was nice.

Thursday morning (today), Sky got up and went home to change and go to work for a few hours, since my day was going to be full of sitting around and waiting. Thankfully, my nurse was very nice and friendly, and Sky figured out how to forward my email to my gmail, so I could keep busy. Got poked for more blood (still normal), finally talked to the doctors we’ve been waiting on, got a sonogram of my legs to check for blood clots, and now we’re waiting to make sure that comes back clear. If it does, then I’ll probably be on a regimen of aspirin from now on and if there’s ever another episode then I might need to have a procedure (not surgery) to patch the hole. So that’s all for now, and hopefully the next time I post on here it will be from home!

Thanks again to everyone for prayers, visits, flowers, balloons, cookies, teddy bears, phone calls, emails, texts, and prayers!!

UPDATE: The sonogram on my legs came back negative (the good kind of negative) meaning that there are no clots currently in my legs. What this means is that there are no immediate concerns of an existing clot that could find its way through the little hole in my heart (yay!). This also means that the prescription for now is to just take one adult aspirin a day. If I ever experience anything stroke-ish again, then they’ll either add a blood thinner to the mix or do a relatively non-invasive procedure to fix the little hole. But of course, that isn’t going to happen, because there aren’t going to be any more stroke-ish episodes, right?? Right!!! So around 5:15 Thursday the wonderful staff at Carle sent us on our way (I think I won the award for being the most boring (the good kind of boring) step-down unit patient ever!), and we’re home, healthy and happy now!

Thanks again for all your prayers and support through this weird ordeal. It’s good to know that we are so fortunate to get to do life with such a cool group of people. And I am so thankful to be able to see God in all of this — if the stroke had happened last or next Tuesday, I would’ve been at a photo shoot and the girls would’ve been with a sitter; if it happened Monday or Wednesday, I would’ve been shopping at the mall or driving to my parents’ house. If the language symptoms hadn’t showed up, I might not have called the nurse at all. So I’m praising God for the way it all happened, and thanking Him for awesome friends like all of you!!