I'm feeling good about life, wanted to chat a bit about what I've learnt in my experience. This community is where it affected me the most, so I felt it was nice to post here.
Feb 14 I attended the Oilers game, then went home. At around 1am, I decided to go out for a snack. Got into my two month old car and I don't remember leaving my driveway. The car stopped as it approached a barricade, and the beeping woke me up.
Then the confusion hit me. My first thought was I was drunk from the pint I had at the game. Turned around, and could not roll down my window to open my gate. I didn't know it, but my left hand was just flopping around.
Finally crawled inside, then the damage started. Since it hit me in the balance center, I would vomit every time I opened my eyes.
My next thought was that someone had spiked my drink. After about 12 hours of dry heaving I called 9-1-1. The ambulance arrived, took all my vitals, said I had the flu, and left.
Sometime over the next five days I posted here that my left hand was not working properly - still confused. Finally,
my mother drove me to the hospital where I said "I think I had a stroke" lol and stayed there for four days.
I initially only told Theymos what had happened to me, and then I posted about it after trolls pointed out I could be an alt. Suchmoon and ibminer also knew, and the help they gave made it an easy choice to hand BPIP over to them.
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CAUSE: I had heart surgery in 1983. Second generation valve, it throws off clots on a regular basis. My doctor retired (no more follow ups on my blood tests), I built a house, I gained weight and the medication couldn't keep up.
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FACTS YOU MAY NOT KNOW:
1) In clots, big is better. Mine was so big it got caught in the first part of the brain to develop - the balance center. That's good because it doesn't affect any of my limbs (evolved after the balance center obviously). For most people, the clot travels through that part and gets caught in the left part of the brain, before the hemispheres cross. Usually, if the clot goes further than that, it hits higher functions and you die.
2) Blood thinners do not "thin" the blood. If a blood cell gets a certain protein, it becomes a clotter - otherwise it does not clot. Blood thinners slow down the production of that protein. If we didn't clot, we would bleed to death from a paper cut.
3) The brain is able to rebuild pathways to a point. You have about 9 months after the stroke to recover your abilities as much as possible, then it slows down to almost nothing.
4) Having a clot in your balance center affects... balance. I no longer can get a "buzz" from beer. I go from sober to massively dizzy - no in between.
There. I feel so much better now. People have been posting a lot of false information, and I've wanted to clear the air for a while. Plus, this is the first time I written my story, and I wanted to preserve the memory while it's still fresh.
Thanks for reading, if you did.
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