On March 14th of 2011, I had a stroke. On that day, I was gleaning a cornfield for a neighbor. I had a massive headache that just wasn’t seeming to go away. But I didn’t know what it was attributed to, so I just went home with my work. I assume that it would be like any other headache and just go away in a matter of hours. Unfortunately, I was very wrong. I collapsed in the field and couldn’t get up. I tried telling some of my friends what was going on but I couldn’t speak. It was infuriating not being able to speak or move or take care of myself.
Eventually one of my friends went and got her mother. Then, action was taken quickly as my parents were called and arrived in a matter of minutes. They took me to the local hospital where they ran dozens of tests. Eventually the doctors determined that I needed to be taken to a larger hospital with more capabilities. So, they took me down to Kansas City to the Children’s Hospital there. Once I got there they continued to run tests and finally determined that I had a severe stroke. The stroke was caused by a condition called fibromuscular dysplasia, or FMD for short. FMD happens in the narrowing of arteries, making it easier for clots to get caught in the arteries, and making it significantly easier to have a stroke, often leading to death among those who have FMD. There are only 16 people in the world with my type of FMD. The research pool was so small that there wasn’t any research. So, there I was living in a situation that doesn’t really have any hope. And I didn’t know what to do. So, I just lived. I lived without purpose. Just doing the things that I was asked to do without questioning.
