A remarkable article from Christine Hyung-Oak Lee on Buzzfeed, recounting her whole experience having a stroke at the age of 33.
It was Dec. 31, 2006. I was 33. I did not yet know this, but a clot had traveled from my aorta into my brain, and made its way to my left thalamus. As a result, my left brain, the expert at numbers and language and logic and reasoning, a part of it suffocated and died. My right brain, the specialist with regard to color, music, creativity, intuition, and emotions, therefore could not talk to my left brain. Numbers became squiggles, colors lost their names, food lost flavor, music had no melody.
What makes this story remarkable as well is that the symptom of her stroke is not normal. I’ve been hearing stories about people having a sudden stroke and the symptom is always physically there. Drooping face, unintelligible words, and such. But no.
People have asked if anyone around me could tell I was having a stroke. “Weren’t you acting weird?” they’d ask, and my husband’s mouth would turn into a thin line, and my friends who joined us for New Year’s would lower their eyes. I was acting weird, yes. But it was New Year’s Eve. My friends and husband were drunk and jolly. I was not talking. They thought that was odd, but not cause for huge concern. They thought that perhaps I too was drunk.
The whole article is a must read, especially since it seems she has recovered fully from the incident, and yet the incident, that little stroke, changed her life forever. I can never imagine how that feels, and trust me, being the overweight mess that i am, nothing scares me more than the thought of experiencing this kind of thing in my lifetime. Time to change, i guess?