T he stroke happened almost three years ago while driving down an Interstate on an Easter Sunday morning. Luckily, my 86-year old mother was in the passenger seat and grabbed the wheel to crash us on the side of the highway. Two good Samaritans stopped to help, and I was soon taken by ambulance to two different hospitals. The second one was able to conduct a thrombectomy, whereby they inserted a catheter through an artery in my groin, snaked it into my brain, and, with a basket, “caught the clot.” (It sounds like a video game, doesn’t it?) The procedure saved my life. I had to have many hours of physical, occupational, and speech therapies to get to where I am now. It’s been a long haul, and I’m still getting better. I consider myself not a stroke “victim,” but rather a stroke SURVIVOR. I’m alive!!! For a recent birthday, my husband surprised me with a trip to Paris, a city in which I spent my salad days. As a young American girl right out of college, I lived in the 17th arr...
A Blurb-ologist's Perspective