Patient Stories: Heart

Heart & Vascular Institute-Texas Medical Center

Phoebe
Saved by a stroke: My stroke was a blessing in disguise
   

Young people aren't supposed to have strokes, but I did when I was just 19.

Although I’m still fighting to get to 100 percent, the staff at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center really helped me recover from the stroke I had in November 2005. While they were at it, they found and fixed a hole in my heart.

I was a college student and working as a waitress when my leg gave out, my right arm went limp and the right side of my face felt strange.
   

I was trying to ask a coworker, “Can you take my tables?” but the words wouldn’t come out. Later she said she knew what was happening but didn’t say anything because she didn’t want to freak me out.
   

At Memorial Hermann, I had a CT scan and was admitted to the stroke unit. My right side was totally paralyzed.

I started therapy every day. At first, I would fall over without the therapists’ support as they tried to help me sit in a chair

After two and a half weeks, I was discharged. I’m on my own; my family truly can’t help with finances and the staff worried that I wouldn’t be able to get therapy after discharge, so they gave me exercises to keep improving.

At home, I worked hard to get my abilities back. Walking came back pretty quickly, but not fine motor skills. I had therapy for my hand and fingers, but my handwriting is still not normal.

The good news is that, while I was at Memorial Hermann, they discovered a hole in my heart that I never knew about. Dr. Richard Smalling enrolled me in a research study and did a procedure to close the hole. He’s done a million of them – well, thousands of them – but not on people as young as I am.

I’m still scared that I’ll have strokes when I am older, especially because no one knows why I had the first one. Dr. Smalling thinks blood clots might have slipped through the hole in my heart. If that’s what happened, it won't happen again.

For now, I am back in classes. I plan to major in business or maybe, after this experience, something to do with pharmaceuticals.

Others think I’m walking normally, but I know I need to keep working. I’m even trying to get back into modeling, something I did when I was a young teen.

With the doctors and therapists at Memorial Hermann on my side, I know I have a great future ahead of me.