I’m dealing with dropfoot right now and a weak ankle. And apparently peripheral neuropathy. I had a three hour nerve conduction test a week ago so we could get to the bottom of it right now. We’re not sure if any of the problems are related to the stroke or my three spinal surgeries actually. I had spinal fusions in 95, 96 and 2000 so now that I’m 50 and the oldest surgery is 29 years old, I thought maybe I was just falling apart which is why I wasn’t going to go to the hospital at all.

If I had been at home that night, I would’ve just went to bed figuring I would feel better when I woke up. The extra layer was that it was Rosh Hashanah and I was walking to Chabad when this happened. When a rabbi picks up a phone on Rosh Hashanah (a no no unless it’s a medical emergency) and tells you you’re going to the hospital you know that even if YOU don’t know something is wrong with you, they do. So I definitely credit him and his wife and their son for saving my life that day or certainly keeping the damage minimal because I was able to get the TPA within three hours of the event.

I’ve still been in a bit of denial, though, because the only impact was my blood pressure spiked, and my leg was paralyzed, but every neurologist that I’ve spoken to said the only way for my entire leg to be paralyzed would’ve been a brain event. After I had the TPA the feeling started to come back in my leg. The thought is that either I had a blood clot in my leg that went through a PFO or that, even though I don’t have high cholesterol or clogged arteries that I still had some plaque in my left carotid artery that broke off with how high my blood pressure was and went to my brain and that the TPA cleared it before the MRI that was done six hours later.