The Event

Its a lazy Saturday morning in August, and a young family sits together discussing its plans for the day.  The wife is excited about shopping for stools for the new home she and her husband would close on in a few days, so the husband is, no doubt brooding over yet another moving expense while their 23 month old daughter toddles about drooling on things and chasing the cat (Sadly, I really can't remember what Lili was doing, but this is what is most likely based on her typical behaviors at this age.)  The wife having woke up with a headache that she refused to allow ruin her shopping plans attempts to ask her husband to get her some pain medicine.  her request seems clear and succinct to her ears, but her husband only hears, "Blarbity-blarbity-blarb!"  The alarm that went off in the husbands mind upon hearing his wife's garbled speech blared more loudly when he watched her fall out of the chair she'd been sitting in and collapse on the floor and even more loudly as he tried to help her off the ground and found she was dead weight.  The wife's mind was cool as a cucumber, maybe even cooler, as her brain cells suffocated, but she heard her husband speaking to someone on the phone and became distressed at his over reaction and dramatics when she hear the words, " I think Cori is having a stroke!"  The EMTs came, and although the wife thought she got up and walked to the gurney, she later learned that she was lifted onto it while her mind raged against her husband's obvious over reaction.  The EMTs took vitals and administered oxygen on the way to the hospital admonishing patiently, "your brain needs this oxygen," when the wife batted at it in frustration.  The wife was surprised about the frenzy upon her arrival at the hospital and began to think, maybe, there is something wrong with me after all.  She was given a room, test were administered and medical professionals were baffled by inconsistent symptoms and a lack of treatment options.  Murmurs reached the wife's ears conveying that the only known testament wasn't an option because of the suspected onset being greater than three hours prior to arrival.  Even this news did't break through the wife's unnatural calm likely sustained by the death of her brain cells that process fear allowing her greatest stress to be answering the ridiculous "stroke test" questions she was being asked repeatedly, "Can you count backward from 100 by 7?  Can you raise both arms above your head?  Wiggle your toes.  Can you feel this?  Sick out your tongue."  She was admitted to acute care blissfully unaware of the fact that  a hospital full of doctors, medical staff, and millions of dollars of medical technology could do nothing to save her slowly dying brain, and the game plan for the next 24 hours was to monitor her vitals and attempt to keep her alive to face rehab the next day and months and a lifetime of disability.  Unfortunately, her family that waited in the hallways and waiting areas didn't get to enjoy such ignorance.  They knew they were waiting to see if their wife, mother, daughter, sister, in-law, or friend would remain a part of their lives.  The wife wonders today as she shares this story if it seemed audacious or completely surreal to those standing by for a well-equiped medical facility in the 21st century to have no way to approach a young woman having an ischemic stroke other than to monitor her vitals and treat what was left of her in the morning with aggressive rehabilitation therapies.  The wife, 34 today with significant permanent disability, thinks that its totally ridiculous, especially with ever-increasing numbers of youth and young strokes, that no more time and resources have been devoted to stroke prevention and treatment.  The wife's mind is on what is now like a hellish memory as she lives with the outcome, because she received a call informing her a family member was similarly languishing in a different hospital miles away with vitals being monitored and hopes that she might survive the night.  Its time, people, to dedicate however much time and money it takes to preventing this scenario being repeated time after time after time in the future.  This wife can't figure out how to do it or how to get others excited enough about this cause to act, and maybe, its because she's functioning on literally one hemisphere as the entire right side of her brain fell prey to lack of knowledge, research, and breakthroughs in brain science, over 6 years ago, but what's left of her can't believe that its not possible to learn more about the brain if someone spent the time and resources to do it, and that such action could save future generations of young families from enduring such hardship.  Support the National Stroke Association, and after you've done that quit your job, go to medical school, and become the brain scientist who discovers how to stop a stroke in its tracks and repair the damage done before it can be stopped!