I'm Cleo Hutton, a nurse, author, speaker, stroke hero, and advocate for other stroke heroes and their families.
Life is not a bed of roses. Among those beautiful and delicate roses are many thorns. I had a sudden devastating stroke at the age of 43. Over the years I have learned that it is not what we do in life that matters; it is how we deal with the things that have happened to us that are our making or breaking. And we don't have to go through difficulties all alone.
In 1992, I had everything going for me. I lived on easy street with my husband, our three rambunctious teenagers, a dog, and two cars in the garage. We lived in a custom built three-level home in an affluent suburb of a metropolitan city.
I worked full time, was chauffer for the kid's activities, cooked, cleaned, and fed the dog. I was stressed. Operating an in-home child care business 12 hours a day with 12 children in care was a very demanding job.
I went to bed the night of June 8th without a care in the world and woke up to a shattered life that would never be the same again.
I had experienced some classic symptoms that led me to believe that something was awry. But being the busy person I was I just chalked it up to stress and continued on my merry way. Little did I know that I wasn't listening as my brain was speaking to me; warning me that something wasn't functioning correctly.
These painless symptoms included my left arm going numb and awkward, an inability to read or comprehend the written or spoken word, visual difficulties. But they would go away as quickly as they came. I wasn't sick. I was just tired all the time. I'm a nurse and tended to the sick and injured. I didn't have a fever and I wasn't injured on the outside of my body.
"A stroke, are you kidding me?" I mumbled incoherently. I'm too young for that! I don't have any stroke factors, my cholesterol is low, and my blood pressure is within limits, and I have no family history of stroke. Yet, everything on the left side of my body was heavy and useless. I couldn't see clearly, I couldn't talk, walk, or make sense of conversational speech.
I wondered if this was all a dream, a nightmare. The reality was that I would spend the next 8 weeks in the hospital and rehabilitation unit. I had heart surgery to correct further strokes from happening and the after affect produced a bad case of pneumonia. I endured it all, only to come home to a broken marriage and a "for sale" sign in the front yard of our home.
This was the beginning of my journey towards a new life, towards an awakening of sorts. Read Striking Back at Stroke: A Doctor-Patient Journal by Cleo Hutton and Louis R. Caplan, MD (Dana Press, Washington,DC) for a continuation of the story with a leading neurologist's view on brain attack.
The greatest strength comes from within. I put my life into the hands of people who truly cared about my well-being: doctors, friends, relatives, teachers, therapists, neighbors and a steadfast stroke support group. I prayed a lot too, "Oh Lord, give me patience, but I wouldn't mind if You sped up the process!"
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