My stroke: the first signs

Exactly one year after my heart attack, everything seemed to be going well. The heart attack was already forgotten, I felt healthy. I had read that if there are no complications within a year, the heart “repaired” itself. I ate healthily, walked 6-10 thousand steps a day.

One Saturday afternoon, alone at home, I was doing the cleaning. At a certain point I woke up with my head resting on a hot radiator. “Hu, I fainted”. Never happened before.

I told myself: “Well, I'll finish the cleaning, I can't leave everything around, maybe someone will come”. But I was tripping everywhere. I knocked things over, things slipped from my hands. Gradually I didn't feel well. I lay down a bit on the bed.

At that time I had no idea what a stroke was. For me it was something that happened only to the elderly. I was 53 years old. I knew it had happened to my grandfather when I was a child, but I remembered him as the same as before, he just didn't talk to us. That was all my knowledge about strokes.

I couldn't think straight. I had a headache. I had to meet someone and wanted to postpone it because I wasn't feeling well. I tried to unlock my phone with my fingerprint: it didn't work (I wonder where I was placing my finger). The phone also hosted some of my crypto wallets, so I had chosen a strong 10-character password, with letters, numbers, and symbols. Trying to type it, I couldn't write the correct characters. I didn't understand if I was seeing poorly or if I was pressing the wrong keys.

I started to worry: “What's happening to me?”. After a while, I managed to unlock the phone, finally. But I couldn't even find Viber for messages. I used it every day, I knew it was there, but I couldn't see it. I tried looking at each icon one by one. Found it.

Then opening the contact: another disaster. Sending a message: even worse, I wasn't getting the right letters. To write “hello” I messed everything up. So I slid my finger across the keyboard typing random things like “!@#$%^234”.

The other person wrote back asking me what I meant. I didn't reply. She called me, I didn't answer. She was a very intelligent person and fortunately was nearby: she showed up at my house.

She heard me speaking, saw that I had a drooping cheek and understood immediately. She also knew that I wasn't taking my medication anymore. She loaded me into the car (me trying to say “I'm fine, I just need to rest”) and took me to the emergency room.

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⚠️ Warning
This is my personal experience. I am not a doctor. Each person can have different symptoms. If you have sudden signs like these – difficulty speaking, drooping cheek, arm that doesn't move – don't wait: call 118 immediately or go to the emergency room. Every minute counts.