
I Had a Stroke at 33 - Thevet
http://www.buzzfeed.com/xtinehlee/i-had-a-stroke-at-33
======
ohquu
What a beautiful article.

My girlfriend had three strokes, in succession, two years ago (when she was
22). The night before these strokes occurred, she had a transient ischemic
attack (TIA). She began speaking gibberish to her friends. She texted me later
that night explaining what happened. Her friends had laughed about it because
they thought she was just acting like a goofball. I had no idea these were
signs of a TIA, but I told her that if it happened again she needed to go to
the doctor immediately.

The next day, the right side of her body went numb. This time, she was around
people who noticed something was wrong, and she was immediately rushed to the
emergency room. By the next day, I had flown a thousand miles (from the
location of my new job) to be with her. She couldn't remember many words. She
couldn't read a clock. She did not know the answer to 3 + 0.

It turned out that, similar to the author of this article, clots had traveled
through the hole in her heart and up to her brain. Luckily, she recovered
fully and was back to her old self within about a month. She had surgery to
fix the PFO a couple months later. The neurologist told her that nine times
out of ten, the clot travels a different path, and the victim is left dead or
braindead. I am so lucky. Writing about this has me in big tears.

I am going to stop writing and go hug her now.

~~~
xtinehlee
I'm the writer of the story--thank you so much for reading. I'm glad to know
that my experience helps people gain further understanding of strokes/brain
injuries. I hope your girlfriend is in a better place, now.

~~~
skierscott
> I'm glad to know that my experience helps people gain further understanding
> of strokes/brain injuries.

After my severe traumatic brain injury, I'm trying to do the same thing. Brain
injuries are so broad and so complex and dangerously invisible. I would guess
this is the one unifying thread between us.

This is a solid A-level piece. Good job on both the writing and content.

~~~
muraiki
I've only had a mild traumatic brain injury, but it's been about 1 3/4 years
and I still have some symptoms. I could emphasize with a lot of what was
written in the article. You're right in saying that these injures are complex
and invisible... and I would say that that is true as much for the people
around you as it is for the person experiencing the injury.

Even for someone who understands the symptoms conceptually, it's a completely
different matter to actually experience what it's like to be unable to speak
the name of a person that you see constantly, or to experience real pain from
light, or to be around people and then be utterly exhausted afterwards. It
took time for my family and friends to grasp the extent of my injury,
especially since it didn't occur in any dramatic or obviously horrible way.

If you are like me, you'll have moments in which you feel completely
frustrated and hopeless. Be patient and merciful with yourself. Last year I
wondered if I'd ever be able to have a job that required serious mental
thought -- but this year I've successfully switched careers to become a full
time programmer.

I apologize if this is unsolicited advice, but I guess I'm saying what I wish
I would have known when I first got my concussion. And for others who read
this: if you get a concussion, see and listen to your doctor -- and if your
doctor doesn't take you seriously, find someone who does (especially if you
have a clinic nearby that specializes in concussion / brain injury). I can't
know for sure, but I think my life over the past two years would have been a
lot different had I simply _rested_ in the period afterwards, instead of
staying up late studying.

~~~
skierscott
> I've only had a mild traumatic brain injury

"only". All brain injuries are incredibly frustrating.

Adding on the advice, if you have others close around you, please listen to
them and take their advice _even if it 's painful._ This was positive for me
and I'm glad I did it... but man it was painful. I felt powerless and helpless
and couldn't grasp the full details of the situation. When everyone around you
is saying the same thing, they're saying it for a good reason.

The largest lesson I've learned is that there's nothing fundamentally wrong
with someone who has a brain injury. They manage their deficits like any sane
person would. Yes, their deficits will show through but that doesn't speak to
_who_ they are. That's their injury showing itself and they're doing their
best to control it.

------
tucaz
About 15 years ago my father had a stroke at our house. I was about 12 years
old and at home at the time along with my grandmother. We didn't know what was
happening. At one second he was okay and in another he was on the floor. It
was almost impossible to put him back at the bed even with the help of one of
our tenants.

We called my mother at work and the funny thing is that before she came home
to take him to the ER he was able to ask for coffee (and drink it) and also to
smoke a cigarette.

Moving 15 years forward he's still with us (62 years old) with no movement at
all on the left side of his body. Had a heart attack with major surgery, is on
more than 15 different medications, has diabetes and a bunch of other "minor
problems".

My mother gave up her life to take care of him and everyday is a struggle
because of the existing problems prior to the stroke and the ones that came
after he became bitter and really mean to those who love and take care of him.

I'm not sure why I wrote about this but I felt like sharing. It's not easy
when people don't recover, but for some reason I believe we have to take care
of them and do our part.

~~~
canadev
Thanks for sharing.

------
weddpros
I was 32 when I had a stroke (March 4th, 2003). It was a different kind of
stroke, affecting a different part of my brain, essentially related to vision.
I was half blind, but I only realized something was "strange" when I saw
myself in the mirror: I had only one eye. My brain knew I should have two: I
was half blind.

The first diagnosis was migraine with aura (blindness in my case). But the
aura should have lasted no more than an hour. Two days later, the aura
(blindness) was still there (a sign of infarct but my doctor didn't know it).

I spent 2 days alone in the dark. I forgot to eat but I knew I had to call a
taxi to take me to the hospital. I wasn't scared, I though it was just a
migraine. It really looked and felt like my usual migraines. So my doctor had
me take anti-migraine pills, which are vasoconstrictors. That might have
caused the actual stroke: extreme vasoconstriction. Never take anti-migraine
treatment during the aura. Never.

It took 2 days before I was diagnosed at the hospital, but they just told me
"I see a shadow on the CT scan"... so I spent the next 2 days wondering what
kind of shadow? stroke or cancer? And no, I didn't think about asking.

It took one week to be hospitalized for 10 days (my mother called the
hospital, harassed them until she could talk to a doctor, who said it was an
emergency... one week after the stroke).

It took 15 days before I woke up in the morning and thought "Wow! WOW! I'm
back now!". Before that, I spent most of my time sleeping, reading half a page
between two naps. I was sleeping more than I was awake.

It took 3 months before I could look at everything I wanted. Before that,
looking at trees (and other complex objects) was "painful", and watching
movies was too exhausting (especially action movies). During these 3 months, I
recovered from blindness, but not completely. I still have a blind spot in my
field of view today.

It took 6 months before my mood was really restored. Before that, I needed a
daily nap, lots of soothing music, and no pressure at all.

I took aspirin daily for 3 years, after which my neurologist told me I could
stop.

I had a few migraines after that, and even ended under oxygen at the hospital
once, but I always recovered within 15 days.

It was 10 years ago, and it changed my life. I quit my job as a developer,
spent 2 years wondering what to do next, then became a wedding photographer.
In february this year, almost 10 years after, I got a new job as a developer.

I'm back on rails (node.js to be precise :-)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> It was a different kind of stroke, affecting a different part of my brain,
> essentially related to vision. I was half blind, but I only realized
> something was "strange" when I saw myself in the mirror: I had only one eye.
> My brain knew I should have two: I was half blind.

There's something going on here beyond just loss of raw visual input. If you
lose an eyeball, or hold your eye closed, and look in the mirror, your one
good eye will still show you that you have two eyes (or, as the case may be,
sockets / sets of eyelids). Perceiving yourself as having one has to involve a
loss of brain function, not just a loss of eye function.

~~~
weddpros
My eyes were just fine: it's the brain that was the cause here. When it
occurs, I can close one eye then the other and still not see in half of my
FoV.

Part of my brain was not irrigated and did not function properly...

There was nothing in /var/logs: I couldn't _perceive_ that I was half blind.
syslogd crashed :-)

~~~
a-priori
Is this always one half of your field of view? Or is it one half of _certain
objects_ (e.g. your face)?

If it's the first, then it sounds like damage to one visual pathway. The
visual input from each eye is divided into left and right fields, and they're
processed independently. Here's a good illustration:

[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Constudeyepath.gif#me...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Constudeyepath.gif#mediaviewer/File:Constudeyepath.gif)

After the optic chiasma, the two pathways diverge. Damage any time after
there, such as to the occipital lobe of one hemisphere, could result in
blindness to one half of the field of view.

~~~
weddpros
It's really one side of my field of view.

It've talked about the face because I did not perceive that half my field of
view was missing, but when looking at myself in the mirror, I saw one eye was
missing... But it really was half of my field of view.

------
ZeroCoin
>I wandered outside the boundaries of telemetry. They lost my heartbeat. When
I returned, they scolded me.

The audacity of health care industry workers (those who should know what a
certain disease entails) who place blame on their patients for acting normally
is infuriating.

I had kidney stones once at a young age. I remember barely walking into the
emergency room one night after they became too painful.

As soon as I arrived, white as a sheet of paper, they asked me a few
questions... doped me up on morphine... and managed to "lose" me on a gurney
in a hallway somewhere for a few hours until my girlfriend at the time came
and found me.

They took xrays I believe and I was free to go with some more painkillers in
hand.

Apparently the hospital told me that I was supposed to call them by X date if
I wanted any more painkillers.

I called them back about a week after that date had passed, asked for a
refill, and was scolded like I was some drug addict just looking for a fix. I
think they even hung up on me. How could I be so stupid as to have forgotten a
date they told me when I was high as a kite by their own doing? Right.

I ended up passing them without any painkillers which as many of you have
probably heard is unbelievably painful.

I understand that it can get monotonous working in a hospital, but with the
amount of money they're paid to work there you would hope that they would be
required to operate with a little compassion. Considering the fact that many
people in a hospital are leaving this world.

What if the author's last memory was that of a person she didn't know berating
her for something she wasn't sure she even did?

~~~
silencio
> ...was scolded like I was some drug addict just looking for a fix...

It's tough dealing with drugs and potential abuse. You know if you're really
in need or not, but they deal with people wanting them for any reason just
because, and so the skepticism starts to show. There's the default assumption
at hospitals/pharmacies of just locking everything down so the healthcare
providers themselves can't abuse them too.

My father was in the ER the other month for severe abdominal pain. He got
morphine _after_ it was discovered that his blood pressure was through the
roof and he wouldn't tolerate even a light touch in the area. Then multiple
people were required for disposal and documentation of whatever was left over
- after someone had to go get it from an automated dispensing cabinet and
_then_ scan both the drugs and his bracelet QR code to verify the order
(+allergies+other things). It was impressively thorough.

In comparison, my neurologist and doctor are really freehanded with nerve pain
meds for my legs. Can't really recreationally abuse anticonvulsants or
antidepressants or lidocaine patches, I guess. Also on the pain front, having
something that can be directly tested goes a far way for the
disbelief/skepticism that might otherwise be a problem. :(

~~~
UrMomReadsHN
I am not allowed to have a prescription that has refills (I assume due to law?
Maybe office policy though). So when I need a refill I have to call and leave
a voicemail message. It takes up to 72 business hours then I get a phonecall
my prescription is ready. I have to physically go there and sign two forms
saying I picked it up AND get my ID photocopied. Then I have to go to the
pharmacy and show my ID AGAIN. I hate being treated like I'm a criminal!!

~~~
ZeroCoin
>I hate being treated like I'm a criminal!!

That's exactly how I felt when I called in for a refill of my pain medication
after just having met with multiple doctors in the ER just a few weeks prior.

Do they really think I intentionally got kidney stones (which they saw
themselves on xray) just to get an extra refill of pain meds a few weeks
later?

No, the lady on the phone probably got intense amount of pleasure by telling
me off verbally and hanging up. At least that's one of the only reasons I can
think she didn't even bother to listen to me.

I was upset and confused, but too proud to call back and have myself
humiliated again. So I just grinned and bore it and screamed like a baby when
the stones actually passed a few days later.

A funny side note to this story... I can laugh at it all now seeing as it's
ten years in the past. In my long walk to the hospital (I was a poor student
at the time, unable to even afford the bus) me and my girlfriend passed a band
of elderly ladies who took one look at me and within seconds said "Oh no, look
at him. You must have stones, don't you laddy?".

I wasn't sure what was wrong with me at the time and I just replied something
like "haha, I hope that's it!" and continued on to the hospital.

6 hours and an xray later... the doctors confirmed the very same thing.

------
huhtenberg
Remember this -

    
    
      You have FOUR HOURS to get a person with a stroke to the emergency. 
    

If you do, their chances of survival are _dramatically_ higher.

~~~
pllbnk
I think many people that haven't personally faced what a stroke is in one way
or another don't realize how dangerous and life changing the disease is. Also,
they don't understand how to detect it.

I have seen it several times. The first time it happened to my grandfather,
nobody in the family realised what's wrong only that he seemingly was losing
memory and repeating things he just said. Several hours passed until we
thought we should perhaps call the medics - stroke was immediatelly recognized
by the doctor and the emergency saved my grandfather only with very mild
consequences afterwards. The second time my grandfather got a stroke, he
started stuttering and had difficulty speaking. Again, we did not believe it
could be stroke, because, you know, he might just be feeling bad. And again,
the emergency saved him within a few hours. During the third and final stroke
that we know of family was already aware and he was taken to the hospital
early but he was released just a couple hours later with instructions to stay
in bed and rest. Overall, about 6 to 8 hours passed until he got the required
medical care. After that stroke he spent almost five years doing nothing, just
existing - with almost completely blank mind. If only the doctors were
professionals and we, the family, would have paid better attention, he would
have been saved.

TL;DR: pay attention to the people you know. If something is _slightly_ off
and the person himself does not seem aware of it, this is definitely a strong
signal that it might be a stroke.

~~~
romaniv
Problem is, there are tons of other diseases that look like stroke. Migranes,
epilepsia, etc. IF you have one of those, going to ER every time you have
something weird going on will suck you dry of money and your doctor will
probably start treating you like an hypochondriac. There is no subsystem in US
health care to handle this. Your primary care physician probably sucks and not
available when you need them the most. ER does not care, prone to misdiagnosis
and like to dope people on drugs before figuring out what's wrong. Been there,
seen that, and it makes me really angry.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Problem is, there are tons of other diseases that look like stroke.
Migranes, epilepsia, etc. IF you have one of those, going to ER every time you
have something weird going on will suck you dry of money and your doctor will
probably start treating you like an hypochondriac."

But shouldn't the doctors have though, "Ok, this man has had two strokes.
These symptoms could be of something much more mundane but as he has had two
strokes we will take very precaution"? I don't want to start the free health
care debate but is that a problem? We have free health care and doctors seem
to be willing to admit you for a night even if there is a very high likely
hood you're fine. Do finances come into it more in the US and actually effect
patient care?

------
patio11
My mother had a stroke. The fallout is very, very hard for the patient and
their family.

Diet and exercise are, apparently, the easiest levers you have to control for
stroke risk. Trust me: this is the best of all possible reasons to care about
those. You do _not_ want to go through it and you do _not_ want your family to
go through it. Specifics elided for privacy but suffice it to say that it
combined elements of a heart attack, advanced Alzheimer's, and a profound war
injury in a compact package that arrived on a normal sunny Tuesday.

~~~
kayoone
Diet and exercise should really be taken care of by everybody. Lowers the risk
of strokes and heart attacks considerably. In most of these young patients the
reasons are due to other (most often undetected) issues like PFO though.
That's also why i really have issues with health care in the US, as many
people avoid checks to save costs. In germany, whenever you feel something is
really wrong, you can just walk into ER and costs will be covered, no matter
what.

------
pragone
Strokes can present in truly any number of ways. The Cincinnati Stroke Scale,
often seen in public health campaigns as "FAST", provides three simple, quick
assessments that can reliably delineate a majority of strokes. It is the
standard for basic EMTs as well. More advanced providers should perform a more
comprehensive exam, testing all the cranial nerves (actually usually just II
through XII). A more formalized, advanced stroke scale is the NIH stroke
scale:
[http://stroke.nih.gov/documents/NIH_Stroke_Scale.pdf](http://stroke.nih.gov/documents/NIH_Stroke_Scale.pdf)

While there are often some kind of neurologic deficit associated with a
stroke, the goal standard is, of course, a CT or CTA that should be
administered immediately upon arrival in the ED of a suspected stroke
(depending on the presentation of symptoms an exam by a neurologist may occur
first).

The symptoms described in this story would absolutely make me think this
person was having a stroke if she had verbalized them to someone with my
training.

It's also worthwhile to point out that the person having a stroke may not
realize they are having a stroke. People may have the obvious symptoms -
slurred speech and hemiparesis - and refuse to acknowledge that these problems
exist, because, in their mind, they don't.

If you think someone is having a stroke, record the time you first noticed
symptoms and call 911 immediately.

------
day_
Great article.

I had a stroke one night in my 20's. When I woke up, my right side was numb (I
thought I just slept on my arm), I spoke gibberish and was unable to write but
I _felt_ fine and I thought I spoke perfectly fine. I finally figured out that
something was not right when I tried to write a message to my mom on the back
of an envelope to tell her that I was fine and I just drew a straight line
instead of letters. That's when she called an ambulance.

Luckily I was back to normal within a month, but I struggled for some time to
to find the right words when talking.

------
tluyben2
I had a TIA when I was 28 (over 10 years ago) and under heavy stress (high
blood pressure; they did not find any other causes; I was healthy as I could
be, just extreme stress from my own business at that time); I swore after that
to never be stressed again (and took measures to make sure that is possible,
like living in southern Spain for large parts of the year) and haven't been
since. I even forgot how it felt. My life is so much better that I now thank
this TIA. Stress is pure hell and whatever business people think they get out
of it; it's bullshit IMHO; I have had way more business success than ever
without stress than I had with.

~~~
huehue
I can relate to this.

At 28 I had to deliver a project with a very tight schedule and ended up
working 70 hours a week. It was fine for about two weeks, then started to have
a permanent headache, then chest pain, then collapsed in the gym. After a
doctor check up it turned out I had a 24h average blood pressure of 190.

It all went to normal again after taking forced holidays.

I swore to never put anything before my health.

Don't overwork guys, it's just not worth it. Screw the rat race. Your health
comes first, it's your most valuable possession.

Stress is always there even if you don't see it, and by the time you do and
symptoms arise it's almost always too late.

------
alexitosrv
Four weeks ago my girlfriend, 32 yo, had a brain stroke because a deep venous
thrombosis at her left side of the head. It was intense to see how much she
deteriorated in the course of just a few hours, starting with a seizure and
some very acute headaches she had together with vomiting the previous days. We
were in intensive care around 10 days, and then 3 days more in
hospitalization. The investigation of her tendency to hypercoagulate yielded
as main culprit sedentarism and the previous uninterrupted usage of oral
contraceptives (mercilon) for almost ten years. We were fortunate in some
sense as the cause was easy to point out and also as we discarded autoinmuse
diaseases (my biggest concern) and now she is under low molecular weight
heparin, hoping that the clot is reabsorbed in two or three months.

As part of the recovery, I'm reading to her My Stroke of Hindsight, of Jill
Bolte Taylor, and her symptoms and the description of the episode of the acute
phase match largely: speech loss, paralysys of her right part of the body and
rational disconnect with external stimuli.

This article highlights also how sensible we are to the changes of what we are
at the end: physicochemical interactions. I was worried my girlfriend would
lose her essence, but thanks to God her recovery has been amazing so far.

------
treehau5
I am not sure if you are the OP or know her, but this story touched my heart.
It is beautiful. I am only imagine how strong she has to be, and the people
around her must be to get through this. My sister and her husband are going
through the very same thing -- He was progressing very well in his career and
they just had their first child when he suffered his from the same reason - a
hole in the heart. All the best. You and all the stroke victims have my
prayers tonight.

------
pimentel
All the stories I know and heard of stroke victims in their 30's or 40's make
me think and ask: is there really a way to prevent or predict a stroke?

Would the "controversial routine full body scan" help? Specially to people who
have a parent being an early stroke victim?

These things are scary as hell...

~~~
giusc
Most common symptoms of PFO are described in the article: "migraine headaches,
or have altitude sickness at 5,000 feet instead of 10,000 feet, or find
yourself panting while doing a slow jog, no matter how often you train." Also
should be noted that there are much many other subtle syndromes that can lead
to sudden cardiac death, many are detected accidentally when testing something
else (going to the ER because of a car accident) There's no math formula to
detect how and when each of us will die one day.

------
skizm
Remember FAST:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAST_(stroke)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAST_\(stroke\))

First 3 minutes of the house episode Fetal Position (S3 E17) demonstrate it.

~~~
alukima
The author points out that she didn't display any of those symptoms.

~~~
ricardobeat
Though she says her speech wasn't slurred, you can tell from the story she had
speech and comprehension difficulties. Regarding face drooping and arm drift,
it could be that she just doesn't remember/didn't notice, again she says
herself her memory was failing. I'm sure a doctor would have recognised the
symptoms immediately.

~~~
Pxtl
She was sitting with her husband and friends for _hours_ and they obviously
felt extreme guilt about not realizing she was having a stroke. I'm sure
they've all played that party back and forth in their minds for days wondering
if there was something they should have noticed. That day would have been
analyzed in agonizing detail by all of them. And it sounds like the writer had
this conversation, as she had to re-piece so much together.

------
camperman
Her memory experience was already reminding me of Leonard in Memento and then
she writes, "it's time for my shot." That hit me unreasonably hard.

~~~
pimentel
I just saw Memento last night (for the first time), so reading the article
felt like an incredible coincidence.

------
TAM_cmlx
Two years ago this October I was homeless. I would wander around all night for
fear of attacks[1] and try to sleep during the day at the university while
sitting on a bench or chair. In October the winter shelters had not yet opened
here, and it was so cold I feared I would freeze to death. I wandered into ER
on a pretext: there was a swelling in my leg, spider bite maybe?

I overheard the intake person talking with someone: "I'm worried about that
guy in #68." Why? "He thinks he's got a spider bite, but he's got blood clot
written all over him."

I felt pretty good about that; it meant I'd have a place to sleep for a whole
night. Then I was suddenly surrounded by 5 or 6 people.

Symptoms, sir?

Sometimes slurred speech, tingling in the extremities, can't spell anymore,
confused by the way people talk so _fast_, confused by simple things,
excessively paranoid, feels like there's an Ace bandage wrapped around my
chest.

You're a junkie. No. You're exclusively vegetarian. No. You're diabetic. No,
I've been tested for that. Well, we'll take a blood draw.

I got an ultrasound over my legs -- and they discovered a DVT. Next thing I
knew, they'd slapped me in hospital for eight days. I was put on no less than
eight medications, the scariest of which was Coumadin (same as Warfarin, I
think?) -- scary because they made me watch a video describing it, by which I
mean "You follow these instructions to the letter or you gonna die, son." At
least that's what it felt like. And I had to sign all kinds of waivers, or
something. Two of the residents (very young women) told me that they had had
DVT's themselves... possibly as a result of being exclusively vegetarian?

The diagnosis was: Pernicious Anemia. My understanding (which is not to be
trusted) is that the myelin sheathing around my nerves has been dissolving for
years. Apparently the communicating tissue between the axons in my brain had
been going away for quite some time.

I liked this diagnosis because: it's easily treatable; it explains my
increasingly weird behavior; I'm not dead from it.

The treatment is: Take B12 every day for the rest of my life.

The highly-abbreviated coda to the story is: My Doctor told I'd had this
disease for at least ten years(!); hospital got me a case manager, who got me
Disability, Homed, and a Laptop. But it took 2 years or so.

TLDR: Being exclusively vegetarian can cause DVT's

[1][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM6WrqLMJrQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM6WrqLMJrQ)

~~~
ZeroCoin
>The treatment is: Take B12 every day for the rest of my life.

Every human being on earth that I know of needs this. It's not just
vegetarians.

What foods were you eating while homeless?

I imagine it's fairly tough to come by nutritional yeast and other B-complex
rich foods whilst living on the street.

My girlfriend is a strict vegetarian, gets her blood checked regularly, and is
apparently fine. We assume because she supplements all of the necessary
nutrients that she lacks in her food. Mainly iron and the b complex vitamins I
believe.

------
Pxtl
> Each night, I took the box of Lovenox syringes and carried it to my husband,
> sobbing. “It’s time for my shot,” I said, tears streaming down my face.

> Each night, he pinched skin on my belly as I screamed like a toddler and he
> injected the medicine.

Her husband sounds like an awesome guy - taking care of her in that state
sounds incredibly difficult.

> My husband and I decided to get a divorce.

> “I think in hindsight, it was your stroke that changed everything for me,”
> he said.

> I thought it was the affair he’d had. But maybe he had a point. “Maybe that
> was the year,” I said.

Dang.

~~~
josefresco
I actually found this to be the most interesting/least covered aspect of the
article. I wanted to know more about the husband, and how he dealt with (or
didn't) the ordeal.

~~~
Pxtl
Also this:

> 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.

How long would that be hanging in the back of his head, eating at him about
what he could have done differently?

------
spindritf
Well, I just popped an Aspirin for no reason.

~~~
mlvljr
just don't do to much of it, one dude killed himself with couple dozen taken
within a day in the 90-ies (or at least that's what the then Russian media
reported; aspirin UPSA was heavily advertised back then)

~~~
mlvljr
I really hope the above was not downvoted due to you guys taking mentioned
amounts of aspirin every day :)

------
GuiA
Will smartwatches with heart rate/other health sensors be able to detect
strokes right when they happen? Or maybe even slightly before they do?

~~~
tdicola
I don't see how a clot in the brain would be detectable through heart rate at
all.

~~~
GuiA
Not sure, but maybe at a preventative level? E.g. if your heart rate behaves a
certain way after exercise or during sleep, maybe it indicates a stronger
likelihood of having a blood clot.

Well I don't know, I'm not a doctor- that's why I'm asking the question,
hoping that someone knowledgeable will answer with a concrete reasoning.

Your comment in its present form is quite pointless.

------
glxc
This is an amazing article and incredible blog

Among many interesting and inspiring themes, of interest to the HN community
may be the disassociation of vision and objects. All of the deep learning
models succeeding in classification emulate one side of the brain, while
perspectives like this present life outside the constraint of rational
thinking.

------
cell303
I was terrified after reading this. Reminded me that I should live a bit
healthier, not drink more coffee then water, got to sleep earlier, wake up
earlier, maybe even exercise. But more important, it got me thinking. The non-
routine kind of thinking. Read some old diary entries. Wrote a new one, after
almost a year.

------
jlavarj
My wife had a stroke at the age of 30, seven years ago. It happened in the
hospital during an embolization procedure. She was unconscious for 5 days.
This event has obviously changed her life, but I wasn't prepared for the ways
it would change mine. Thank you for sharing this.

------
rosser
This is relevant:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke...](http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight)

------
delackner
Profound. Thank you for sharing this. It pains me to read though that you had
years of abnormal symptoms (severe shortness of breath, migraines, etc) and
the medical system was unable to detect the issue early. This seems like the
sort of issue that early detection could provide tremendous quality of life /
survivability improvements at little risk. If the existing tests are too
difficult, then we need more tests.

------
taybin
This was on _buzzfeed_?? Crazy. Didn't think those soul-less bottom-feeders
would turn to quality long-form essays.

------
yousifa
This is the best piece I have read in a while. It is amazing how something so
small could affect our life. We are so delicate. Do you actually see objects
as shapes and colors (as in, was the part of the brain that translates the
signal into images lost) or was that you can not figure out what it is that
you are looking at?

------
dgorges
There is a similar TED Talk worth watching:

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

[http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke...](http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight)
(18:19 min, Feb 2008)

------
nikant
Such a well written article. I loved the details with which the incident was
described.

------
bshimmin
I wish Buzzfeed only had articles like this.

~~~
sergiotapia
Why, people enjoy the other types of articles - why should they not cater to
them as well?

~~~
meritt
Because we associate BuzzFeed with bullshit clickbait spam. It makes it
difficult for an article to reach the right audience when you have such a
large amount of negative association with a particular brand. It'd be like if
the supermarket tabloids starting include well-written and legitimate content.
It's going to take a substantial amount of work to win over the millions of
people who view them exclusively as a tabloid, which is exactly how we view
BuzzFeed today.

~~~
bshimmin
Exactly.

I don't even know how you'd find this article on Buzzfeed - the homepage is so
obnoxiously cluttered with vapidness ("21 Hashtags All Curvy Girls Really
Need") I only lasted about five seconds. It's like a parody of everything
that's awful, only it's real.

~~~
mcintyre1994
If you want a parody of the parody then clickhole.com is awesome - it's the
sibling site to The Onion.

------
diestl
Not sure what this has got to do with programming?

~~~
dang
Intellectually interesting stories on all topics have been welcome here ever
since PG changed the site name from "Startup News" in 2007:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html)

By the way, if anybody wants a hit of meta, it's astonishing how precisely the
last five paragraphs there still apply.

~~~
mkal_tsr
> The focus of Hacker News is going to be anything that good hackers would
> find interesting

How are we defining "good hacker" ?

> It doesn't include most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless
> they're _evidence of some interesting new phenomenon._

Can a "good hacker" be curious and intellectually satisfied by political
stories even if they don't include _new phenomenon_?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the article. However, if we're saying, "this is
on topic for HN" or "this is off topic for HN" it seems weird to have a
definition that is 100% dependent on one's lived experiences and what _they_
individually find interesting. Maybe someone really really likes cat pictures
because of the color or makeup of the fur, or the instincts of felines. Maybe
someone finds geopolitical discussions about surveillance states to be
intellectually uninteresting because they feel helpless to affect reform. Or
they feel most startups are void of substance and rely too much on VC funding
and thus are not intellectually interesting.

I guess I'm looking for a bit more of an enumerated "this is acceptable" and
"this is not" as opposed to "you'll know it when you see it."

Thoughts? Thanks!

~~~
dang
I don't think "defining" captures what we can do about these things.
"Meandering around" is more like it. But here are a couple observations.

A semi-objective thing about most of the uninteresting, non-HN-appropriate
stories is how predictable they are, i.e. how repetitive of previous instances
of the type. The more predictable a story is, the less information it adds and
the less interesting it is.

There's a reason we say " _intellectually_ interesting" to describe the
stories HN wants. There are different kinds of interesting. For example, we
all have an interest in the things we're personally invested in or identify
with, but that is not intellectual interest.

Similarly, as humans we're highly interested in what other humans are up to,
but that—think gossip and celebrity news—is not intellectual interest either.
So a story can be interesting without being a good fit for HN, quite apart
from not all having intellectual interests in common.

Maybe this explains why upvotes alone don't work for a site like HN. We upvote
the things that excite our interest. It's too much work to pause and ask
ourselves what kind of interest we're experiencing. And the non-intellectual
kinds have the advantage—they require less attention to get excited. (For one
thing, they rely on recognition, while intellectual interest relies on
curiosity, which is an absence of recognition.) This is compounded on the
internet, where attention is fleeting and fragmentary.

~~~
mkal_tsr
Oh absolutely, this is a really neat conversation that I was hoping could
happen. You mention how predictable stories are, and we all have those moments
on social media sites where we're all rolling our eyes. I think it might be
interesting to look at HN from something like Google Trends, wherein tracking
the topics that are upvoted/downvoted. Maybe do some penalties for topics that
have a large front-page success rate and upvote/downvote ratio (and throw in
comment # too, same with comment length) and you could start to probably see
trends for circlejerk material. We'll always have people flagging stories for
duplicates or the like, but certain topics always get through by virtue of
many people submitting about that topic.

The advantage to so something like Reddit is if a topic is talked about too
much or not at all, you can just add a channel and grassroots it. On HN, you
only have a single timeline and front-page (yes, there's searching, but people
are lazy). News sites have channels but editors which controls the stream (and
most restrict who can edit). I think a more algorithmic approach to
provisioning up and down channels for specific topics could be neat. Not
really sure where I'm ultimately going with this, kind of free-forming based
off issues I've seen with internet discussions and IRL discussions and recent
controversies as of late. I think it's important to look at how HN does it's
news/info vs. reddit vs. twitter etc, to me it doesn't feel like we've really
'optimized' it yet for user distributed news ... or maybe I'm not hip with the
latest app.

------
ozy23378
> 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.

This popular myth of broad specialization of the hemispheres needs to die. The
author lost credibility there.

~~~
sergiosgc
There were a thousand ways to convey this information. You could have pointed
at articles, you could have enlightened the reading audience. You chose the
one with the highest insult to information ratio. And you did this when the
target of the insult is someone who went through a tough ordeal.

Humanity never ceases to amaze me, on both ends of the spectrum.

~~~
ozy23378
My first draft was actually more harsh, mostly because I do not consider this
essay well written in several aspects. I did not insult the author; I just did
not sugarcoat my criticism, as US American culture of insincere friendliness
may demand.

~~~
sergiosgc
I'm not North American. Your post has a high insult/information ratio in any
culture.

~~~
ozy23378
You still have not pointed out my alleged insult (as in personal attack). The
only insult I see here is your passive-aggressive one: "Humanity never ceases
to amaze me, on both ends of the spectrum." As for your questioning why I did
not reference external sources, the invalidity of this popular myth is far
from arcane knowledge, especially on the Internet where it is just one web
search away, and I do not reward lazy ignorance.

