Britany H.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
By: Brittany Hales

Family

Had I Known the Signs

I hope that my story will inspire awareness. Early stroke detection is crucial, and had I known the signs of stroke at the time, I may still have my mother.

On October 18, 2006 I made sure to tell my mom I loved her before I left our house for my college classes. She was acting strange, and I had a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. My mother was a nurse, so I trusted her that she was OK.

While sitting in Communications 101, I got a call from her work. My mother was being taken in an ambulance to a local hospital. This was approximately 7 hours after I had left the house. When I got to the emergency room the doctors said she had suffered a stroke, and needed to keep her overnight to monitor the situation. My mom and I took this as a sign, that is was time to get healthy. We thought everything would be OK.

Three days later my mom was still in the hospital, and the stroke had continued. The whole right side of her body was paralyzed, and she could no longer speak. She ended up in the ICU when she couldn't breathe for herself.

After over a month in the hospital, she wrote me a note, which is how we had been communicating, albeit not very well as her handwriting was pretty shaky and at times impossible to decipher. But the note clearly said "I want to go home". I told her that if I took her home, she would die. She nodded that she understood that. So I took her home with Hospice. On November 30th 2006, she passed away at home. At the age of 21, I lost the most important person to me in the world.