The Lessons I've Learned as a Young Stroke Survivor

I woke up in August and thought it was February. When I tried to eat Cheerios or my grandma’s chicken noodle soup, I was unable to bring my right hand to my mouth. I had to let my parents feed me as if I was an infant again. How was it Sunday when my open heart surgery was Thursday? I couldn’t figure out what was happening to me, what happened to four days of my life, or why I couldn’t do simple things I once took for granted, like feeding myself or having the ability to easily recall the day of the week and month of the year. I remember asking, “Mom, what happened?”

I can’t recall if any other family members were in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of Johns Hopkins Hospital with me, but they already knew what my mom was about to tell me, “Andrea, there were complications during the operation. Your heart was fused to your sternum, and the heart was cut with the bone saw. The doctors believe air bubbles got into your bloodstream and reached your brain. You had a stroke.”

I didn’t fully comprehend what this meant for me at the time, but I was confused as to how I had a stroke, since I thought strokes were something that happened to older people, not 16-year-old rising high school juniors. I quickly discovered how tasks that I had once taken for granted were going to become difficult. In the hospital, when I tried to eat my grandma’s chicken noodle soup — my first food that wasn’t ice chips — my right hand shook, and I had no control over it. I kept trying out of sheer stubbornness, but eventually, I recognized the fact that I would have to be fed. It was the first time the magnitude of what happened hit me.

Over the course of my hospital stay, and with the help of a physical therapist, I gained back the ability to eat without being spoon-fed by someone, to walk without getting disoriented, and to climb stairs without having to lean on someone else. Since I was easily able to gain those basic skills back quickly, I thought recovery was going to be fairly easy because I was young.

A week into the school year, the school’s president — who also happened to be my Honors English teacher — passed out a blank schedule and instructed us to write down our Monday schedule for use at Parent-Teacher night. While it had been difficult for me to master the school’s rotating schedule my freshmen year, I was confident that I could write down my Monday schedule: blocks A through H in alphabetical order. I took my pen and only then did I think: what is my A Block class and what room is it in?

I glanced around the room, and most of my classmates had written down their schedules in less than a minute. I pulled my schedule out of my bookbag and went to copy it onto the yellow piece of paper. My hand shook, my pen slid all over the place, and it took me several moments to copy my schedule correctly. When I was done, it was barely legible. It was at that moment I realized my stroke had caused more issues for me than I had thought. It was at that moment I thought I wouldn’t make it through junior year. It was at that moment I thought my life was over as I knew it. It didn’t help that my teacher was hovering over me since I was taking so long and I couldn’t deduce what she was thinking.

I came home that night crying, and I showed my mom the poorly written schedule. I lamented about how it seemed like none of my classmates or teachers knew that I was struggling since I didn’t have any physical signs of an injury. It had taken my English teacher watching me struggle to write a simple class schedule to realize I needed to lighten my class schedule for the year. I believed I wouldn’t be able to handle the challenging coursework for the year. I believed I wouldn’t pass my classes. I believed I would never be the same again. I hated how I couldn’t remember things as easily as I once could, like my class schedule or my homework assignments. I thought my stellar academic life was over. I asked Mom, “Why did this happen to me?”

It’s pretty much the universal question anyone asks when they’re in a less than ideal situation, but my mother had the perfect response, “Because God knows that you can overcome challenging situations. Look at how far you’ve come since your back surgery a few years ago.”

I pondered what Mom had just said, and that was when I realized my post-stroke life would be what I made of it, no matter how cliché it sounded. My life wasn’t over because I had a stroke. Certain aspects of my life and my intellect were affected: my short-term memory was impaired, my math skills were compromised, though honestly, they were never great before the stroke, and my handwriting still rivals a doctor’s in terms of readability, but my stubborn, can-do personality had not changed. I was still me.

As the year progressed, I told myself that I would make the honor roll, that I would pass the AP United States History test, that I would maintain exceptional grades, and I would make it through the struggles. And I did all of that and more.

It took hard work and determination. I did have to lighten my course load by dropping trigonometry for the year. I put in hours of time to complete projects for my classes. I also had to handwrite notes for my classes, forcing me to improve my handwriting. It was the hardest I had worked in my academic career, but it paid off in the end.

I graduated third in the class, I’ve completed an undergraduate degree, and I am working toward a master’s degree. If having a stroke has taught me anything, it’s resilience. I’ve gained more courage than I ever knew I had. If I thought my recovery from spinal fusion surgery was difficult, my stroke was even more so. But in both cases, I persevered and never gave up, even when things were difficult. It taught me to believe in myself, because I can achieve anything. A once dark time in my life has actually become one of my greatest blessings. Of course, if I could choose whether or not to have a stroke, I would choose not to have one. But if it had to happen, I’m glad I had a unique opportunity to learn about the power of resilience.