My Stroke – Anniversary (1)

Was My Stroke Really a Year Ago?

On this day last year (13th June) I suffered my stroke which started as I drove to work. You can read about it here, here, here, and here. Looks like I am beginning to become a stroke bore when the truth is that I rarely think about my stroke during normal life. However, I wanted to be able to spend some time reviewing where I am, where I think will go next, and how I view the past year.

This photo was taken, I think, 3 days after my stroke. Not a pretty sight with one half of my face sliding down and declaring UDI from my brain. It was the left side of my face that slipped, in case you can not tell….

My Stroke was Unusual

My stroke was of a variety called Lateral medullary syndrome. who knew that there were different types of stroke? I thought that a stoke was a stroke. If you want to you can read about Lateral medullary syndrome here.

Here is a bit from that article;

“This syndrome is characterized by sensory deficits that affect the trunk and extremities contralaterally (opposite to the lesion), and sensory deficits of the face and cranial nerves ipsilaterally (same side as the lesion). Specifically a loss of pain and temperature sensation if the lateral spinothalamic tract is involved. The cross body finding is the chief symptom from which a diagnosis can be made.

“Patients often have difficulty walking or maintaining balance (ataxia), or difference in temperature of an object based on which side of the body the object of varying temperature is touching.^[2] Some patients may walk with a slant or suffer from skew deviation and illusions of room tilt. The nystagmus is commonly associated with vertigo spells. These vertigo spells can result in falling, caused from the involvement of the region of Deiters’ nucleus.”

What did that mean?

Well, one very odd effect was that although it was the left side of my face that fell it was the right side of my body that was affected. For me it meant that although I could feel pressure if someone poke my right side it would feel the same if they stuck a needle into me, i.e. I felt no pain. To me hot felt cold on my right side. Imagine how that felt when I showered. My left side felt the water as hot, my right felt as if I was having a cold shower!

Later, my right side felt as if all the nerve endings all fired whenever my right leg and foot touched anything. For example putting my sock on my right foot was painful because all the nerves fired at once. putting a shoe on was a slow and painful experience and so on. A couple of moths later I went on holiday and fell over when I walked into the sea because I could not cope with all the sensations from my right leg and foot!

The next post will cover the 5 main areas where I have been affected. Not all stoke sufferers are affected the same way, as I now appreciate. Shame that it took me having my stroke to open my eyes!

For more information about strokes visit http://stroke.org.uk

Tags: health