The Day Bryan Had a Stroke - NOT!!

First, I have to give a disclaimer - Bryan did not have a stroke. But we thought he did.

You know how there are commercials all over TV about the signs of a stroke? And you remember them, but you don't think you need to worry about them until you're retired and old and wrinkly, right? Well, yeah, I thought that too, until Bryan came home from work on Monday.

He started off by telling me about his afternoon. Around 2:30 he got weird blurry vision around the outsides of his eyes. So he decided to take a little nap. He woke up 10 minutes later, vision fine, but with a pounding headache. He then proceeded to drive to his shop. About 40 minutes later, his sister called him, and he couldn't form a sentence. The words were there in his brain, but they were coming out all mixed up and he just couldn't say what he was trying to say.

As he's telling me all of this, I'm thinking of the commercials, and how you have to act very quickly. I ran down to look up the signs of a stroke - he had all of them except for nausea, numbness, and loss of consciousness. I was trying not to freak out, but I can honestly say that I've never been so scared for him. Bryan rarely even gets sick, let alone something like this.

So we called Sharalee who was so great to take our girls while we went to the ER. I have to say that the ER waiting room has 2 posters about how "a stroke is a ticking time bomb", and then when we got called back to triage there was another poster with the signs of a stroke listed on it. Did not make us feel better, but we did get a good laugh out of all the stroke propaganda everywhere. It's a good thing we both have the same sense of humor, because without it we would've been a wreck. He had tons of blood work done and a CT scan and (thank goodness) nothing was wrong. He had what they call a "complicated migraine" which we think is their way of saying "We don't know what's wrong with you, but it wasn't a stroke". But they did say that we did the exact right thing by coming right in.

So now, Bryan just keeps calling himself a stroke victim and I should get things for him and be extra nice because he had a stroke. It's getting very old very fast. I quickly remind him that all he had was a bad headache that cost us $150 ER copay. Men are such babies :). Seriously, though, this was actually really scary, and I'm just so glad that nothing was wrong. I don't know what I'd do without my B-Town, and I don't want to ever have to think about that again.

But the next time you see him, please ask him about his stroke and tell him that one side of his face looks droopy - I'd really appreciate the pay backs!!!