“What’s it feels like to have a Stroke”
During the past 4 years this question has been asked of me several dozen times by people I meet.
They generally open the topic with the phrase-“You don’t mind me asking , but what’s it feel like to have a Stroke?
And until recently I have struggled to provide a meaningful answer.
My initial response was “It is hard to put into words”, I found it hard to describe the usual signals that Armageddon is about to/has exploded in your head, the inability to speak, the total lack of response in the right side of your body \{my stroke was a Left Lacunar\}.
.Also, strangely all these events were accompanied a total lack of pain!
It was after I met a fellow stroke survivor on one of my daily walks that I am now able to describe the feeling of having a stroke more accurately.
He described his stroke in the following manner “It’s like when you go to the dentist and he gives you a needle in the gum to deaden what tortures he is about to inflict’.
Its that feeling of numbness after the needle, nothingness, you know your mouth is there, but it doesn’t register with your brain.
Then imagine that feeling of deadness down your entire right side.
That’s what my stroke felt like.
Then when it passes, what was left was nothing, no communication between my brains and my right side-but help is on its way!!
That’s where the rehab kicked in – I found new pathways so that the pathways that were blocked were replaced.
2 pathways were unavailable-
- the one which created my craving for nicotine-BLOODY BEAUTY
- and the ability to WINK WITH MY RIGHT EYE!!
Hope you enjoyed this or even learnt something!