BECAUSE I SAID SO

from SIMPLYkc Magazine September 2022

PARENTING

Any time someone you love is in the hospital, it serves as a reminder to our own health. This is my daughter’s reminder to you: know the stroke symptoms.

TIME IS BRAIN

WRITTEN BY JULIE BURTON / PHOTO BY JAMI BOWMAN

Over the summer, my 16-year-old daughter Emma woke up and told me she couldn’t see from her peripheral vision in her left eye. It got worse. She said she couldn’t read. She’s had headaches that caused her to lose her vision before. I told her it was probably a migraine and she should lay down.

She told me her head didn’t hurt but her vision was now completely gone in her left eye. I called her pediatrician and her eye doctor, and they agreed we should take her to the eye doctor to be checked out.

As we were driving to the eye appointment, her speech started to fail. She stuttered and spoke slowly. She began to confuse words and mix up sentences. We arrived at the eye doctor, but they couldn’t find anything physically wrong with her eyes. But Emma’s speech continued to worsen.

Her dad met us at the eye doctor, where we made the decision to take her to the ER. “Code stroke” was called and a medical team rushed her in for a CT scan. Nurses insisted on exact times of symptoms which, luckily, were timestamped by my phone calls and texts to my ex-husband, Scott.

It is said that “time is brain.” The nervous tissue in the brain is rapidly lost as a stroke progresses. The first hour of a stroke is called the golden hour because stroke patients have a much greater chance of surviving and avoiding longterm brain damage. The earlier you get to the ER, the better.

After a few CT scans and a series of tests by a neurologist, it was determined Emma did not have a stroke. She had a “complex migraine” that shows eerily similar symptoms to a stroke. There is no way of knowing if it’s a migraine or a stroke without a CT scan.

Moving forward, Emma will need to see a pediatric neurologist about the migraines. Her dad and I can bring our stress levels down a notch, although we will never be stress-free. (Let’s be honest, we all know that hospital bill.)

And a reminder, when you see signs of a stroke: time is brain.