Stroke... Part 1

A month ago Chris suffered a stroke. I am just now having the time to "talk" about it. It is, by far, the scariest thing I have lived through. I hope hearing our story will help others know the signs and trust their instincts if faced with a life and death health situation. I am so thankful I did. Here is our story...

It started like any other Monday. Alarm goes off. Take a shower. Get dressed. Pack my lunch and Zach's lunch. While packing Zach's lunch, make a mental note that we are out of juice boxes. Drop kids off at daycare. Commute in to work together. Work all day. Chris picks me up. We chat about our day on the drive home. Pick up the kids. Come home. Sort mail. Unpack Zach's backpack. Remember we are out of juice boxes. Say to Chris "Honey, check in the garage to see if we have another box of Capri Sun's and put them in the fridge." Chris comes in from the garage and says "we don't have anymore, want me to go to the store? We could use some sour cream for the chili anyway"? (we had made chili on Sunday to have for dinner on Monday and it came out a little spicy so we though sour cream might make it less spicy for the kids). I debated on him going since it was the last week of summer school and I could get by with other drinks for Zach's lunch. But, he decided to go. While he is gone, I start warming up bowls of chili. I call and chat with my mom for a few minutes.

Little did I know my life was about to change forever.

About 20 minutes later, the kids announce "Daddy's home!" and I continue what I am doing. I could see the driveway from the kitchen and noticed the car door was open for a few minutes, but figured that he was gathering his things, turning off his IPod, etc. He walks in carrying boxes of Capri Suns and a grocery bag. I look at his face and he just did not look right. His left eye looked very small, like he was squinting and the left side of his face seemed somewhat droopy. I asked him what was wrong and his response was "I don't know, my vision was just off, I need to lay down for a few minutes". My heart starts racing. That just did not seem like him but he has been mentioning that he needs to see the eye doctor lately to get a new prescription for his vision problems in his left eye that he has had for years.

He lays on the couch and I am drilling him with questions. He has a coy smile on his face, almost like he was mocking me for being concerned. I ask him to smile. Smile was fine, face reacts on both sides of the face. I ask him to stick out his tongue. Both sides of his tongue look like he has been clenching down on it and there are teeth marks running along both sides. Then our conversation goes like this:
Me: "I am calling 911"
Chris: "No you aren't, I am fine, just let me rest and you guys start eating dinner"
Me: "No Chris, I am calling 911"
Chris: "Stop, I am fine, you are not calling 911"
Me: "Fine, I am calling my mom to have her come over and watch the kids in case I need to take you to the hospital for some reason"
Chris: "Fine"

I call my mom and tell her that Chris isn't acting right. I don't know what is wrong but he just doesn't seem right and he is telling me not to worry or call 911. She says "Jennifer, call 911, I am on my way".

I start pacing. Trying to decide if I am overreacting (which I have been known to do), or if there was really something wrong. Then I hear him say "the coach emailed us about the protocol of the defense". I picked up the phone and called 911. He is still looking at me like I am nuts and should not be concerned but he just was not himself. I hang up with the 911 operator and within minutes I hear the sirens of the fire engines. I talk to the kids and let them know that there will be a lot going on in the house in a minute and they are coming to make sure daddy feels OK and they need to stay out of the way. I move all the toys and shoes and make a clear path from the front door to the couch where Chris is.

The firemen walk in a few minutes later and start hooking Chris up to machines and asking him questions. Zach, of course, is trying to help them. Hannah starts panicking and wants nothing but to be held. They ask Chris if he knows where he is and he knew our address perfect. About 5 minutes later, he got one of the numbers wrong. Most questions they asked him were basic and he answered fine. Things like his name, day of the week, his birth date. They asked me to ask him questions that only we would know. I asked him Zach's birthday and he knew the day and month but got the year way off. By this time the EMTs had shown up as well. The wonderful woman driver had pulled Zach to a little corner in the house and talked to him and kept him occupied. They prepare to bring the gurney in and are looking at the tight fit (our house is small). Chris says "No, I can walk out", which he did. He laid on the gurney which they had on the porch. They strap him in and start loading him in the ambulance and the kids say goodbye. They were very excited about the stickers the firemen had just given them. I am standing there in shock and a neighbor walks over and asks if I need anything. One of the firemen says to me "you need to get to the hospital as soon as possible because we have no idea if what he is saying is true." I turned to my neighbor (who I had met in passing but did not even know her name) and said "Can you sit with my kids? My mom should be here within 10 minutes" and I jumped in the front if the ambulance. On the way over I was pretty hysterical and the driver (who had just finished keeping Zach occupied) was trying to keep me engaged in conversation. She asked if I had someone to come to the hospital to sit with me. I hadn't even thought of that. All I was thinking was taking care of Chris and making sure the kids were taken care of. I call our friends Doug and Kelly and ask if they can keep the kids for the night so my mom can come up and be with me. We work out arrangements and they, once again, come through for us and come pick up the kids from my mom. As we are driving over to the hospital in the ambulance, I cant hear much of what is going on the back but I do hear them asking Chris if he did any drugs when he went to the store to which he answered "yes, I smoked some marijuana". I asked the EMTs in the back "What did he say?! He is totally full of it, he did not, there is no way". They all kind of look at me like I am nuts or lying to them to protect Chris. Then they ask him "What is your doctors name?" and he says "Dr McNerney". I said "No, that is our kids pediatrician". They started an IV and that was about all I knew that was happening on the ride over.

We get to the ambulance bay of the ER and they are unloading him. It was quite chaotic so once I knew where he was going to be, they took me to a little waiting room to wait for my mom and so that they could get things going. I waited for what seemed like an eternity and finally went back to his room. The ER doctor explained that they think he is having a stroke (which I already figured by that point) and that they are going to do a CT scan to be sure it isn't a brain bleed and at that point we will talk and I will need to make some choices. By this time, the ICU doctor had come down and was working closely with the ER doctor. Being that they suspected a stroke and he would be moved to the ICU they worked as a team.

By now, Chris had moved past the point of speaking coherently and he was completely talking gibberish. Some things that he said would make sense but it was like it wasn't even him talking. His expressions were nothing that I recognized. He could not squeeze his right hand. One of the doctors asked him to raise his right leg. He raised his right leg. The doctor asked him to raise his right arm. He raised his right leg. The doctor asked him again, to raise his right arm. And again, he raised his right leg. The doctor asked him again to raise his right arm and he looked at the doctor and said "What do you think I am doing?!". He had lost all movement in his right arm and hand. I asked him if he knew who I was and while I could tell that he recognized me, he could not tell me my name. I paced between his room and the hallway outside his room. It was hard for me to be near him because it scared me so much and with every minute that passed, he seemed to be falling further and further away from me.

They took him back for the CT scan while I waited, alone with my thoughts. I wondered how I was going to get through this. I was convinced that he would never be the same person. How would this change our family? Would he still love me the same? Is our marriage strong enough to get through the aftermath that this will cause? Will he survive this? Could I handle being a single parent?

The CT scan was over fairly quickly. The ER doctor confirmed what we all suspected. He was suffering a stroke. He told me that time was of the essence and I have a decision to make and I need to make it quickly. We stood in the ER room talking over Chris. Me to Chris' right and the doctor to Chris' left. Chris asleep between us. He explained that a stroke is a blood clot that has traveled to the brain and he went on to explain my options to me.

Option 1: They will administer a drug called tPA through his IV and it takes an hour. It is a drug that is used to break up the clot. Approximately a third of people who have this treatment will have no residual side effects from the stroke. Approximately two-thirds of people will have some sort of side effect. A speech problem or a limp or something of that sort. And then there is small percentage of people that will die within minutes of administering the tPA and another small percentage of people that will die within the hour. This treatment must be administered within 3 hours of the stroke starting. By this point, we were at about the 2 hour mark.

Option 2: There is a fairly new procedure where they insert a catheter into the brain and break up the clot that way. This allows a 6 hour window of time to administer the treatment. The hospital we were at do not do this procedure, nor does any hospital in our county. He would need to be air lifted to Santa Barbara. And he laid out all the risks associated with that procedure. This one did not really seem to be a feasible option. I am all for new medical breakthroughs, for other people. But if I am even going to consider it for me or my family I would need a lot of time to research and educate myself and obviously there was no time for that now.

Option 3: Do nothing.

My mom got there while they were explaining Option 2. I looked at her and told her to tell me what to do. I mean, I could tell that Option 1 was the typical protocol but those weren't really good odds to me. I wanted another choice. I wanted the choice that would make Chris him again. A third of a chance that he would be 100% again?!? That is not really good odds. But I didn't have much time to think about it and doing nothing didn't seem like an option so, I decided that tPA was going to be my choice. A choice I never wanted to be making. Never did I think at 32 I would be making a choice on how to save my husbands life.

We stood in the hallway talking to the doctors while they started the treatment. It is probably good I wasn't in there because I would be panicking. Panicking that we would be that statistic. That small percentage of people that die within minutes of it starting. The ICU doctor asked me if I had any other questions and I said "yes, but you cant give me those answers! You cant tell me whether or not my husband will be OK so no, I don't have any questions." and he just quietly put his head down. The nurse came out about 10 minutes in to it and said he was doing well. I felt like we passed one hurdle. He didn't die. Let's keep focusing on overcoming more hurdles.

We all went in to talk to him as he was awake now. That quickly, he was able to squeeze his hand again. He still could not lift his right arm. I asked him if he knew who I was. He said "Stop It". I said "No really honey, what is my name?". And he could not tell me. He said "you're my wife" and then said a few different names and finally thought hard about it and said "Jen". He still spoke a lot of gibberish. Lots of stories that did not make a lot of sense. Most were about soccer. One story seemed that he was thinking about work.

At this point, they took him up to the ICU and got him settled up there while the tPA treatment finished. My mom and I sat with him for a couple hours and talked with his doctor and nurse. He was extremely tired and told me to go home and sleep. I debated on staying in the ICU with him for the night but I knew that we had a long road ahead and I needed to get some rest. I had the direct number to the nurses station at the ICU so I was able to call and get updates on him through the night.

I went home to an empty house and sobbed myself to sleep. This could not possibly be happening.

To be continued...... Part 2