Stroke

God works in amazing ways.  One example of this I learned a couple years ago when my husband suffered a stroke.  There was no warning signs that anything was amiss, nothing to signal that a stroke would occur.  He was wanting to talk to the “man” of the house where we were living and had asked me to ask said man to come back to our bedroom.  Let me interject here that my husband is in a wheelchair and was not having the best of days that day as far as getting up & about.  Anyway, I was reluctant to go and ask the gentleman to come back to our room since he had just sat down with his own family to watch TV and I hated to bother him.  But, at my husband’s insisting, I ended up going out there and asking him to come back….  As the “meeting” progressed, my husband mentioned that he was seeing two of the man he was talking to.  He also mentioned feeling dizzy.  Because of the Spinal Cord Injury and Blood Sugar issues it is not uncommon for my husband to “not feel well”  Having had some past medical experience (EMT classes & CNA training) I went to get a Blood Pressure to get an idea of what was going on.  Unfortunately I only had a digital type which gave me an “ERROR” reading.  I checked all the connections and tried again but to no avail (Ohhh how I wished for my old fashioned Sphygmomanometer – that took a BP the old-fashion manual way).  Calling in one of the guy’s sons the plan was to help my husband into the car and to the Emergency Room.  I should state that the son in question is our Mr. Heave-Ho guy who will move a couch by himself w/o batting an eyelash.  This didn’t work out as planned and my husband was feeling progressively worse.  Result – Scrap plans and go for 911.  Paramedics came and when a BP was taken it was 250/150.  You don’t have to have medical knowledge to know that that is EXTREMELY HIGH!!!   We later learned at the hospital that he had suffered what (if I am recalling correctly is a Hemorrhagic Stroke.  Basically meaning a hole was blown in the blood vessel in the area of the pons.

 

Two miracles come to mind….

 

#1:  If that “meeting” hadn’t of taken place my husband would have just gone to bed.  It’s possible that in going to bed his BP might not have sky-rocketed the way it did, but there’s also a chance that it could have.  If  that had been the case he would have suffered the stroke in his sleep and no-one would have known.

 

#2:  The stroke was only millimeters from being in an area that could have affected his breathing ability.  As it is, the stroke has affected his balance and his speech (to some degree, though not super noticeable.