‘Only a Stroke’

A student’s journey from a little pain to a life regained

NewsAlex Hilmi — The Fulcrum (University of Ottawa) — Published February 28, 2011

It persisted for several days. And it got worse, eventually taking on a mind of its own. When my vision started getting blurry, I figured it was time to look into this extraordinary headache. This, of course, meant a combination of Google and WebMD. After a self-diagnosis that I had a migraine, I made a trip to the pharmacy. A skinny man looked at me from across the counter as I described my symptoms.

“Yeah, that’s a migraine alright. Is your other medication not working?” he asked. I was confused.
“What do you mean ‘other medication?’”
He looked about as confused as I was.
“Well, you’ve had migraines before, right? You don’t just get them.” He then recommended I see a doctor — immediately.
With frustration starting to build, I made my way to the campus health clinic and waited until I saw a doctor. His name was Dr. Engleheart; he was a patient man who listened to my symptoms with a trained ear, and then said the life-changing phrase.
“Alex, I do not want to alarm you, but you need to go to emergency right away and have a CAT scan. These symptoms can only be caused by a problem in the brain, and it could be an aneurysm.”

Read it and weep

It was a split second after I heard these words that all my frustration from earlier turned into a chilling fear. My headache suddenly seemed to be screaming at me from inside my skull, as if my rapidly increasing heart rate was aggravating whatever ailed me. As the seriousness of the situation began to sink in on the cab ride to the hospital, I was struck with a disturbing new side-effect.

From one minute to the next, I forgot how to read—words became a blurred, incomprehensible mess. By the time I got to the hospital, I had gone from fear to panic. After going in a side door, I was told that I was not in emergency. Confused, scared and shaken up, I asked how to get there.

“Oh, it’s easy,” a hospital worker informed me. “Just follow the signs.”

The walk from reception to the emergency room was the worst experience of this ordeal. Imagine stumbling aimlessly through a hospital. The side of your head feels like your brain is trying to break through your skull, while fear, panic and a host of other emotions burn through your mind — and, on top of everything, you can’t even read the fucking signs telling you where to go. Eventually, I made it, and it only took about 15 minutes before I was lying on my back in a hospital gown having a CT scan.

Afterwards, the doctor came over with the head diagnostician, ominously wanting to speak with me. They matter-of-factly explained that they had seen a mass on the CT scan and they thought it might be a brain tumor. My headache seemed to subside upon hearing the news. The rushing in my ears went away, and I just nodded and asked for a few minutes alone.

I had brought my backpack with me, so I slid down the wall, pulled out my laptop, and put on music. It was soothing—something by Bonobo. My doctor came in again with a bag in her hand. She had brought me some food, and together we sat on the floor and ate sandwiches and drank chocolate milk. To this day, chocolate milk has become a sort of comfort food, reminding me of sitting on the floor digesting the possibility of having a brain tumor.

A stroke of luck?

One MRI later, the neurosurgeon came over to my bed. He sat down, and explained that brain tumors are fatal 90 per cent of the time. But then he told me I didn’t need to worry about this, as I did not have one—I had only had a stroke.
It seems strange to say “only had a stroke”—especially when I was only 21 years old when this happened—but considering the odds of the other possibility, I can see why he phrased it like that.

I was taken to the Neurological Care Facility: Stroke Ward. If you have ever had a nightmare about being trapped in a place surrounded by sorrow, death and suffering and thought it was hell, it was probably the stroke ward. It was the single most depressing, traumatizing and mentally unnerving experience of my life, and I spent two weeks there.

I was a favourite of the nursing staff. They had become quite cynical working on this floor, and they told me that I was the youngest patient they had ever had—and also the only one they knew would walk out of there. There was one night when my blood pressure skyrocketed and the headache came back, despite the morphine. They told me everything was fine, but they checked on me constantly and I got the impression they feared I was about to take a turn for the worse.

Before I could fall asleep that night, I had to wrestle with the fact that I might not wake up. It’s a difficult thing to do—at 3 a.m., full of painkillers and your family not by your side—to realize when you close your eyes you might never open them again. At that point, I had regrets, but nothing involving money or success. It was simply for not having been a better person, wishing I had made better decisions, or not having told the people I love that I love them one last time.

After a night like that, waking up in the morning was the greatest blessing in the world. When I was finally released, the nursing staff gathered to wish me well and I told them that I hoped I never saw them again.

Everything is different now. Everything is somehow better. It was an opportunity to grow up and begin living a life of restrictions, self-discipline and big-picture mentality. I love it. Weight loss, good health, a sense of maturity, realizing that my actions affect everyone around me, learning how to be less selfish and more selfless — all things I had wished for but had never been able to achieve on my own. These things, and a new lease on life, were given to me, to use at my own will.
The stroke happened last August, two weeks after my birthday, and you know what? It was the best birthday present ever—it was just unwrapping it that sucked.