Strokes Are Not Just An Old Person Problem

Its funny how early teen memories are inextricably linked with popular culture. Milestone moments are never far from a scene in The O.C., or that time you watched The Ring. When people ask about my step-dad’s stroke and the ensuing chaos that my life was swept up in, my first thought is not of hospitals or parental absence, but of Dawson’s Creek on VHS.  I had just put on a taped episode of the show one Sunday evening when my mum and step-dad headed off to the Emergency Room to check out his migraine symptoms.

He had been painting the room of my as-yet unborn little sister when suddenly he felt a strange sensation through his arm, dizziness, and a strong pain in his head. In my house there are many rules, but most of them can be reduced to the simple phrase, “Mum knows best”. Even if she tends on the side of hypochondria, you just roll with it. And so it was that pregnant mum and dizzy step-dad headed off to the ER, and I was left in charge of dinner and bedtime for my not-yet two-year-old little brother.

Looking back, this small act of precaution undoubtedly saved my stepfather’s life: two days later, hooked up to machines and surrounded by a bunch of medical staff, he endured a stroke. Not like the tiny, momentary one he had that Sunday evening, but this time a massive, more permanent one that left half of his body paralysed.

Strokes Are Not Just An Old Person Thing

When people talk about strokes, it is more often than not in relation to an old person, maybe a grandmother or grandfather. Strokes are thought of as things that occur at the end of a person’s life, the final misadventure after years of battling old age. While this narrative helps us collectively understand and accept these occurrences a lot better, it makes a stroke in a 38-year-old man more difficult to comprehend.

But it shouldn’t be. Stroke is Australia’s second biggest killer – it kills more women than breast cancer, and more men than prostate cancer. One in six Australians will have a stroke in their lifetime; of the 420,000 Australians living with the effects of stroke in 2012, 30% were of working age.

Did my step-dad survive? Yes, in the sense that his heart kept beating and blood kept pumping. But if you can imagine a stroke as someone being punched in the brain, leaving a substantially sized bruise — the area of which stops functioning — you begin to understand that there are nuances to survival when your central engine takes a beating. In these instances the bruised section of the brain will stop working, sometimes momentarily, sometimes permanently, resulting in the loss of movements in arms, legs, and facial muscles, and occasional personality changes.

For us, I remember a deep sense of confusion that hung over our family and friends. How could this happen to a healthy man with a two-year-old kid, a 13-year-old stepdaughter, and a pregnant wife? And what on earth comes next in the face of paralysis?

When people don’t know the answer to a difficult life question, they tend to offer answers they do have to other, more simple questions. No one knew when he was coming home from the hospital, but they did know how to keep my family fed for the foreseeable future — so they stocked the fridge with more meals than we would ever need. No one knew how my pregnant mum would manage to bring a new baby into the world with the other wage-earner in physical rehab, but they did know that the laundry needed doing — so there was always someone around “just putting on a load”.  I didn’t know how to explain the chaos to my little brother, but I did know how he wanted to celebrate his second birthday — so I learnt to make a number of the Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book recipes, and threw him a big party. (And yes, I made the choo choo train from the front cover).

The true answers to all the bigger questions would reveal themselves in time, but for now everything was madness. Our house was filled with aunts, neighbors and friends offering practical support, and my step-dad was in hospital with mum by his side for as much time as she could spare, while trying to also keep the lives of her three children moving along. The new order meant I was my little brother’s most familiar face at home. Responsible for bath time and the bed routine, I remember the feeling of taking him up the stairs to his room, slipping away from the chaos and, for a moment, feeling like maybe it was again Sunday night, and mum and my step-dad were just going to the hospital to deal with a migraine (as the Doctors first diagnosed it to be). And that was it, no more; everyone would come home the next day and we would all carry on, untouched by that moment.

The Recovery

The assault of a stroke is like a bruise, but the recovery is like a broken bone. Once the cause of the strokes was diagnosed, my step-dad was moved from the hospital to live in physical rehabilitation clinic where he was set with the intense task of regaining as much movement as he could. Just like those weird learning apps on smartphones tell us, the body is a muscle and you have to keep training it, to keep your body functioning.  He regained movement in his leg, allowing him to walk. His arm never recovered but most of his facial muscles returned, and he began to look like himself again.

When my little sister was born, my step-dad was brought from the rehab hospital to the delivery suite, and a little while later he came home and would go for day visits to his physical therapy. I often marvel at the thought that this is all my little sister has ever known.  He never returned to work — the environment was too stressful, and the toll on his body too much  — but slowly our household started doing its own washing again. The following year for his third birthday my brother picked out his preferences, a dangerous precedent for difficult cakes having been well and truly set.

On a broader scale we continue to relegate strokes and their symptoms strictly to the purview of older people — scary considering that all the lifestyle risk factors fit well and truly in the 25 – 50 age bracket (alcohol, smoking, lack of exercise). There remain too few options for younger people recovering from strokes beyond aging hospital environments and the increasing costs of private health care, and the push towards less public benefits cut out the number of victims who could feasibly live even after surviving such an ordeal.

Nowadays I don’t muck around with medical symptoms. I don’t disregard the importance of health and life insurance. And when I see a person with the noticeable after-effects of a stroke I always wonder who it was who suggested — no, insisted — they get it checked out.

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To join the fight against stroke, buy a #StrokeSolidarity string in April, or online.

The F.A.S.T. test is an easy way to recognise and remember the signs of stroke. For more information, visit www.strokefoundation.com.au

Face: Check their face. Has their mouth drooped?
Arm: Can they lift both arms?
Speech: Is their speech slurred? Do they understand you?
Time: Time is critical. If you see any of these signs, call 000 straight away.

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Brigid is not a writer. Nor is she a baker or a lawyer, but she’s mastered most of the Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book and writes scary letters to Real Estate agents.