Did you know that giving brings joy to you and life to so many others? When you donate to my AHA - Heart Walk campaign, you get something back that's priceless - satisfaction knowing your donation helped fund research that could cure heart disease and stroke.
Let me tell you my story and why I participate in this amazing event….
In July of 2019, after watching my son play baseball, we went home to swim and have some dinner.
While in the pool, my arm felt weird and was moving, without me having any control over the movements. I didn’t think a lot of it as it only last a few seconds, and turned around to talk to my husband and our neighbors. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the left side of my face drooped for a few seconds, prior to me talking. My husband informed me of this at a later time.
I felt fine as we went back home following our swim, and I didn’t have any additional weird sensations, so we had dinner and went about our normal evening. The next day we were back at the ball field for another game, as the boys were in a tournament. I was telling my “mom” friends at the field about the weird incident and they immediately told me I had to go to the hospital. I wasn’t happy about it as I wanted to watch the game, but understood the importance of it after they were discussing the symptoms sounded like a stroke. We then left the field and went to UC Hospital to discuss what happened and for the testing to begin.
As I’m sure you can imagine, they were not happy with me not coming in immediately when this weird sensation happened. After doing a LOT of testing, they determined I did have a TIA/Stroke and more testing began to try and find out the cause of this. I saw many neurologists, a cardiologist and many other specialists and it was discovered that I have a hole in my heart. Now, if you weren’t aware of this like I wasn’t, we are all born with a hole in our heart but it closes as we grow. However, sometimes the hole doesn’t close all the way and can allow an opening for a blood clot to flow through the opening and to the brain, causing a stroke. They never confirmed this 100% as being the cause of my stroke, but needless to say, they did adjust and implement a plan of vitamins and some blood thinners and other medications to maintain a healthy blood flow in hopes to keep any further clotting and strokes to occur.
I was lucky! I have no long term affects from this mini stroke but I had a stroke at 50 years old! I can tell you that it is extremely scary and as much as I hated staying in the hospital for several days for them to run all sorts of tests trying to figure out the cause, they were able to do these tests and help narrow things down. Had I gone to the hospital immediately, they also have medicine to reverse and stop any affects of the stroke while happening or immediately following the stroke.
All of this is possible due to events that help raise funds, like this AHA Heart Walk. These funds are used to help fund the groundbreaking research to help keep hearts beating!
I hope you will help me hit my fundraising goal and even better, join me for the walk here in Cincinnati!
Thank you for viewing my page and donating to this cause! You are truly making a difference!
