Life threw a meteor upon us last Thursday (6/27). I can tell you it was exactly 8:00 pm. John and I were watching Jeopardy, and it had just ended. He shut his laptop, leaned forward to put it in the coffee table, and fell back into the couch. If he hadn’t made a strange noise, I might not have even realized something was wrong from that movement all by itself, although I now realize the more accurate word is collapsed. He collapsed back into the couch.

His hands were over his eyes and was saying that he couldn’t see because everything was upside down, and that the room was spinning. He was conscious and talking but was nauseous and vomiting with any movement. He thought it was vertigo. We have a brother in law who has suffered from severe vertigo for many years so I called his wife, John’s sister Lori.

Everything I described to them was classic vertigo. She told me if I could get him Meclizine it would make the spinning stop. I had begun to suspect something was really wrong and right before I called Lori, I had texted a friend about what was happening and said I was thinking about calling an ambulance.

I had also asked John to hold his arms out, and smile. I couldn’t remember what to ask him but I asked him to say the alphabet. He did these things but he was laying down at the time, because he literally couldn’t sit up. I now know this is trunk aphasia.

In this first hour I had given him a melt under your tongue zofran thinking if he could stop vomiting and sleep maybe he would wake up feeling better. Meclizine also miraculously appeared and I truly I thought this was a God thing. Until he vomited it up 5 minutes after taking it.

It was at this point that he said to me that he thought he was going to die of a headache and that was it for me. I told him I was afraid he was having a brain aneurysm and we were going to the ER. He said let me see if I can get in the car but he couldn’t even sit upright.

At 10:06 I call 911. At 10:16 Cobb Fire arrived. I am still having trouble processing what happened between now and the time someone actually realized John was having a stroke, but it’s hard. If I think about the following events too long, I feel rage simmering just below my surface, and I don’t have time for that right now.

Three fireman assessed him, administered the stroke test and declared him well enough to call off the ambulance. I can’t remember exactly what I said but something along the lines of if they were going to call off the ambulance, then they needed to help me get him in my car. I pointed out at that he couldn’t move without vomiting and something was obviously wrong.

The ambulance and two women, tiny in stature arrived. This is an important detail because they said they couldn’t get John out of the house on a stretcher because they were unable to lift him over the steps of our porch. We have a total of 3 steps, including the door jam.

One of the women asked me to pull a car out of the garage so they could bring him out that way. Then after I moved it decided they couldn’t lift him down the one step from the house to the garage. Cobb Fire eventually carried John outside to the ambulance stretcher by his legs and arms. At this point he looked completely unconscious and limp as a rag doll.

I still can’t process this whole scene. First Cobb Fire decided that my husband who is stroking out is absolutely fine, and then an emergency medical team is completely stumped as to how to get a man who weighs 175 lbs from the first floor of a house into an ambulance.

Finally, at 10:44 the ambulance is en route to the hospital.

Upon arriving at the hospital, I do not see John for an hour because there is no room in the ER and they are holding him in the hallway. About an hour after arrival he is put in a room and I am brought back. It takes about another half an hour for a PA to evaluate him. I can see that the PA sees something when he examines John’s eyes and he is sent for a CT. Things move pretty quickly from here.

I wish that the ER would’ve moved more quickly but I’m guessing he came in with an assessment from the EMTs that his vitals were fine and there was nothing really wrong with him.

So. John has been in the neurosciences ICU and will likely remain here until early next week when he will go to inpatient rehabilitation.

His stroke was a vertebral artery stroke. If you know him, you know he is fit and healthy. He had a heart catheterization about 5 years ago and it was (quote) clean as a whistle. Not to mention, he’s 56.

The stroke was huge. It affected his entire right cerebellum. It is hard to process that this has happened and even harder to process all of the information we have received, much of it conflicting by well-meaning people who either want to prepare us for the worst, or give us hope for the best.

John has a long road ahead of him. At this point I am just focusing on him and trying to make sure the best possible decisions are made for his recovery.

So far, they have been unable to identify a cause, but they are not done looking. Until yesterday they thought that it was due to dissection. When a small tear occurs, clotting happens to try and heal, just like with any other cut. They were able to rule that out so now we are trying to figure out where the clot came from.

When the rage about how he was treated in those first critical hours comes, I am trying to rely on my faith and practice what I claim to believe – that God is in control, that there is a reason for this chapter and that somehow, someway we will be better for having endured the challenges and come out on the other side the better for it. I’m trying.