One Woman Shares Her Story of Having a Stroke at 33
By Carson Quinn
A pop. That’s the noise Jennifer Haines never expected and will never forget.
It was February 2011, and the then 33-year-old was relaxing on the couch, watching TV alone after her husband went to bed. Haines and her husband had just moved to Westerville, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, with their almost 2-year-old daughter. The couple had previously worked together at a company that develops direct-to-consumer shipping software for businesses, but after the move, Haines became a stay-at-home mom while working on her LivvyLinn jewelry business on the side.
That night, all was normal until Haines heard the pop. “I felt like I was really drunk, for lack of a better explanation,” she says. “I got up and headed for the bathroom. I was running into walls in my bedroom, and running into walls in the hallway. By the time I got to the bathroom I was sick to my stomach, and I couldn’t stand up. I basically ended up on the bathroom floor.”
That’s where her husband found her at 3 o’clock in the morning. Emergency room doctors, Haines says, didn’t know what was wrong with her. It wasn’t until the next evening when they ordered an MRI that they discovered she’d had a stroke.
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While strokes — which occur when blood flow is cut off to the brain — may seem like something that happen only to the elderly, that’s not the case. According to the American Heart Association, the number of strokes in people aged 65–84 is down 28 percent — while strokes in adults 25 to 44 has increased by nearly 44 percent. And strokes affect younger women much more than their male counterparts.
Common risk factors for stroke in both male and females include high blood pressure, diabetes, being overweight, smoking and a family history of stroke, but neurologist Eric Braverman of PATH Medical and the PATH Foundation in New York says women are at a higher risk than men for strokes specifically because of birth control pills, which can thicken the blood and cause blood clots.
But that doesn’t mean you should swear off the pill. Dr. Braverman says there are ways to mitigate or even prevent strokes, including taking baby aspirin and fish oil daily, as well as exercising and maintaining a healthy weight. Dr. Braverman adds that women who are at a high risk for stroke are also at a high risk for heart disease. “It all trickles down to cardiac disease later in life,” he says.
And while prevention is key, knowing the signs of stroke are even more important, since getting treatment quickly is a must. Warning signs include sudden weakness in your limbs, loss or dimness of vision, difficulty speaking and on-going migraine headaches.
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Haines remembers asking her doctor about her migraines prior to her stroke. “I used to have lots of headaches, but at no point did anyone encourage an MRI,” she says. “Could that have prevented this? I don’t know.”
After her stroke, Haines was diagnosed with fibromuscular dysplasia, a condition that causes changes in the diameter of medium-sized arteries, which her doctors told her was connected to her stroke. She was also on a birth control pill, though Haines doesn’t know if that was connected.
Now, more than five years later, Haines says it took many difficult months for her to re-learn how to walk. And she says she’s still working on getting back to some semblance of her old self, both physically and emotionally. “The stroke definitely changed my brain chemistry. My personality is very different,” she says. “I’m not as sharp as I used to be, I don’t have the stamina that I used to, and I get migraines more frequently. I am also more tired more quickly; that is a constant battle.”
Haines believes more awareness is needed about the fact that women in their 30s and 40s can indeed have a stroke. “I don’t think doctors are well versed in strokes in women this young because it is rare,” she says. “Women need to take it upon themselves to learn about the different kinds of strokes and to know the classic signs.”
This article originally appeared on Modernae.com a pop culture-free lifestyle website for 21st century women.
