Stroke.

I’m starting a blog, because having a stroke 6 months ago really messed me up. 

And not in the stroke-related way you may be thinking, but in an emotional way. My life turned upside down really, really quickly. I’d only been out of school a year and been working for 6 months at a new job when I forgot where I was, what year it was, who my fiancée was, and honestly, who I was. 

My fiancée (now husband) and I went and looked at a wedding venue, we visited a friend at a local brewery, then went to my parents’ house for dinner. 

I told my family “I’ll be right back”, and I wandered into my old teenage bedroom to look for something (I can’t remember what at this point) — but I started seeing double vision everywhere I looked.

This had happened before, but normally, it stopped after a minute or so.

This time, it didn’t.

I was having a stroke; it was like I left my own body. My mind was looming somewhere else in a void, no registration of the series of events that would presume in the next few days.

In the past, my NP had told me this eye-crossing vision was due to ocular migraines, and my optometrist told me to use eye drops and that it was allergies that were causing them. However, I now know that if you’re a woman who has spent the last 14 years taking birth control to minimize the pain of her periods and you smoke marijuana every day, and you start to develop ocular migraines, it’s best if you stop taking your birth control as soon as possible. Oh, and go see a neurologist immediately. 

“The study… found that daily use of cannabis — predominately through smoking — was associated with a 25% increased likelihood of heart attack and a 42% increased likelihood of stroke when compared to non-use of the drug.” –_{^{Jeffers, A, et al. Association of cannabis use with cardiovascular outcomes among US adults(link is external) Journal of the American Heart Association. DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.123.030178}}

I hate to think weed caused it, but there’s not really a guarantee that it didn’t, and my doctors still claim to be only theorizing on what actually caused the stroke. Which basically led me to figuring out that I’m addicted to the devil’s lettuce. As it turns out, gateway drugs are also just… ya know, drugs, but with less physical withdrawals. And while I believe in moderation, I was taking this drug like it was a water goddess, and I was wandering the desert.

Anyway, my views of marijuana addiction are another story altogether.

When my consciousness finally returned to my body, I was seeing triple vision everywhere that I looked. My dad had three faces, and I was so dizzy that walking across the room made me nauseous. I wound up wearing an eye patch to mitigate some of the visual distortion. (& yes, I did look like Daryl Hannah’s character in Kill Bill – thank you to my then boss for leaving a photo of her taped to my monitor when I returned to work.)

Eventually, my vision returned to normal and I survived with almost no lasting side effects.

So, what’s the point of me writing all of this down? 

Not because it’s trendy or because I think my life is uniquely interesting, but because I can’t hold it in anymore. I’ve got these words gnawing behind my ribcage, begging to be written.

& If there’s one thing this stroke has taught me, it’s that life doesn’t wait for us to “feel ready.” It’s that today my health is fine, but tomorrow it may not be. That I am both strong and fragile. So here I am, trying to write it out.
Welcome to my messy mind. Filled with the resilience of being here and the newfound fear that I may not wake up tomorrow.

Care to join me?

-Suzannah