Chapter 2: The Crash 

Day 1: What would you do if it was your wife?

My stroke happened on Wednesday, 20 February 2019. Just shy of two years living in Tokyo. At age forty-six. With no real cause for alarm.

I remember the morning clearly. I was getting ready to meet Katja for coffee, before we went off to the Parent Student Association meeting. Truth be told, I had not been feeling well for days. I didn't know what was wrong with me; I felt so tired and lethargic. It wasn’t like me. My days were generally packed to the brim as I juggled three kids, a household and writing. I’m not talking about the general fatigue that goes with being a mom of three, making you collapse into bed at nine o’clock in the evening. This was more of a relentless, broken-down feeling of debilitation. And, it left me feeling hopeless. 

I never made it to that meeting.

It’s funny how we tell ourselves little lies when we don't know what’s happening to our bodies. I’ve always been attuned to what’s going on inside and I’m a massive self-advocate for getting to the bottom of any problems. I am doctor-friendly and never missed a chance for a massage or a chiropractic appointment. But with this situation, I just didn’t see how anyone could help me. So, I just carried on with my jam-packed schedule. 

On Monday, two days before my stroke, I gathered my tennis racket and hit the courts. I was pumped, or at least I was trying to convince myself that I was pumped. What I didn’t know then that I know now, is that this tennis game might have been a sneaky culprit in provoking my stroke. As I raised my racket to the sky to hit a smash, the funniest thing started happening. I started seeing spots where the ball should be. Not just one or two spots – those little buggers were actually hiding the ball from my vision. My coach made me sit down on the bench for a moment, but I shrugged him off, insisting that my symptoms were simply due to the fact that I hadn’t eaten enough for breakfast. Lie number one.

I went home and couldn't shake this sluggish, fuzzy feeling twirling around in my head. I remember thinking that if I could just have a nap, I would feel better. A deadline was looming and I had a bunch of writing to get done for it, so I carried on. I remember driving to the family club that evening, with my kids in the car. My principal goal was to let them do their activities, do their homework and feed them so I could finally lay down in bed. 

As I awoke the next day, I felt nervous. Lulu and Friso were going off to ski camp with their school. I didn’t have time to decipher if my unease was just jitters or the nagging malaise that was still affecting me. When I dropped the guys at school to meet the ski bus, I remember turning to my friend Gordana, another school mother, and saying, “I am just utterly tired.” 

She commiserated, telling me that she had said the exact same thing to her husband that very morning. We agreed that the winter months were doing our collective heads in and that was that. 

After the drop-off and the goodbyes, I hit the courts with Katja. It was curious to see, but those strange spots were in my way again. It was beyond all reason. I had never dealt with something like this before. I just wanted them to vanish. I didn't make a fuss, but after popping some mints in my mouth and telling myself that it was just because I hadn’t eaten enough for breakfast, I carried on exercising. Lie number two.

Afterwards, I could no longer ignore the fatigue, the weariness, that had enveloped my body. I convinced myself that taking a nap on the couch was all that I needed. Lie number three. I was fine after that nap. Lie number four.

That Wednesday morning, where one phase of my life ended and another, more complicated, tricky one, ended up taking its place, started out like any other day. Except it wasn’t. I awoke with numbness in my lower right leg. The feeling of listlessness, inertia, was overtaking my being. Here I was, a forty-six year old woman, in good health and, yet, I was about to have a stroke. 

I would like to say that, in this moment, running through my mind were my kids, my husband and the emergency number posted on the refrigerator, but actually what goes through your mind when you're knee-deep in having a stroke is nothingness. It is a state of bliss that takes your mind off of the here and now and redirects you and your thoughts to fairyland. 

One minute I was asking Johan to take Cleo to the bus, while texting that I would be a little bit late, because I just needed to lay down, and the next moment I was looking at my phone, trying like mad to remember how the bloody thing worked and what I was trying to text anyway.

And then there was nothing.

As I relive the days leading up to my stroke, I am saddened by the thought of the what-ifs. What if I had gone to my doctor? What if I had been aware of the signs for stroke? Sadly, I’ll never know the answers.

There are some memories which are seared into my brain like scars. When Johan found me, lying in a half-dressed state, phone in hand, he was incredulous, asking me the same questions over and over. 

“Stacie, can you hear me?” 

“Stacie, can you say something?”

“Stacie, what is the password for your phone?”

I knew that he was there and that he wanted me to answer those questions, but it really didn’t register as important. I didn’t realise the urgency. I remember the fear in Johan’s voice, although it didn't alarm me. Later, I realised that in his state of shock, he was frantically trying to use my phone to call for help. Because he didn't know the code and he continued to push the numbers several times, he blocked the phone. To this day, I have suppressed my memory of that code. 

I remember Katja’s green sweater. I remember thinking I should tell her that it is a nice colour on her. It didn’t seem at all strange to see her in my bedroom. Katja’s husband, Olivier, is a doctor. He was traveling on business the day of my stroke. Of course, Katja phoned him several times that day, but I will always remember her saying that, in the morning, she called him as we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive. She quickly described the scene that was unraveling in my bedroom. She asked, with desperation, “Is there anything that looks like a stroke, but isn't?” Olivier answered his wife that, sadly, there was not. 

I remember waking up from my slumber as the paramedics were taking me down the stairs and again when the Emergency Room nurses were tugging my bracelets off of my wrist. Funnily enough, I remember sitting up and asking for a bar of soap. That got them talking, or rather questioning my perception of reality. Upon bringing me that bar of soap, I demonstrated how to rub it on my wrist, so that the bracelets would come off more easily. 

I remember Johan telling me that I couldn’t go home just yet because the doctors wanted to run some tests, an angiography. I felt my first anxious moments, because his face, which was normally so calm, had fear written all over it. My perception was slowly catching up to reality.

I remember waking up from my slumber in the operating theater to the kind faces of my husband and my best friend. They were sweetly telling me something which I have no recollection of, but they looked so tender, so loving. I just knew that everything was going to be ok.

I remember the insurmountable dread that I felt when I woke up during my surgery. I couldn’t move because my head was in a vice. I couldn’t talk to signal that I was awake. I just stared wide-eyed at the calmness of what seemed like a dozen surgeons staring at computer screens. And then nothing.

Those hours must have seemed like a lifetime for Katja and Johan. I truly can't imagine what they had to endure for those long and seemingly endless hours, all the while putting on their brave faces. For nearly ten hours, they waited. They didn’t eat. Thankfully they had one another.

Johan had the crushing job of phoning my mother, who was laden with shock, worry and fright. Of course she wanted like hell to be there, grasping his hand as I went thru surgery. As she is located in the United States and I was in Japan, she had a taxing long few hours to spend from afar. 

As she woke up my stepfather to tell him, her fears turned into something much bigger than simple emotion. It was like she felt the need to protect me, wrap me in her arms and kiss my cuts and scratches goodbye. I can only imagine what she was thinking, the need to shield me from the dangers of my own body, must have hurt like hell. She was patiently waiting for any news from Johan or Katja.

As it turned out, I had suffered a dissection (a tear) in my internal carotid artery, the artery which supplies blood to the brain. The normal treatment for this is a stent, a small mesh tube surgically implanted to reinforce the artery, but because my carotid artery is redundant (curly or torturous), it would make the surgery more difficult. As one can imagine, that was not something that you hear every day. Instead of letting the utter bewilderment that Johan must have been feeling pull him under, he went into survival mode. He forced himself to reach out to anyone and everyone who could shed some light on the situation.