My Husband Had a Stroke - The Gracefully Aging Woman

Just the Beginning

It was early that November morning when I heard my husband bumping walls and groaning as he made his way back to bed. He described his dizzy state to me and said he was feeling nauseous. My first guess was vertigo.

My husband’s mom had struggled with debilitating vertigo at times. It seemed logical. And then his speech became slurred as he said his right arm and leg were “turning inside out.”

One part of my mind told me that my husband was having a stroke. The other part was reminding me that my husband was only 48 years old and that there had to be another explanation.

I am not one given to call the doctor very quickly, but I could tell that something was terribly wrong whether it was a stroke or something else. I quickly prepared to take my husband to the hospital only to realize that I would never be able to get him to the car.

For the first time in our 26 years of marriage, even with having nine kids, I called 911. The ambulance and firefighters arrived and began asking questions while checking Troy out.

We were at the hospital within an hour and a half of Troy’s first showing symptoms that something was terribly wrong. And yet the doctors wouldn’t fully believe he had had a stroke until nearly four and a half hours after the first symptoms.

My husband had a stroke. Don’t those words just sound scary? What does that even mean? How will this affect my husband? How are we going to make it through this?

Oh, and did I mention that we have 9 kids? Yes, you read that right. Oh, and my mom had just come to live with us 2 ½ months prior to my husband’s stroke because of her own stroke. I have been a stay at home mom for all of my married life. What was life going to look like now? Was I going to have to go find a job after all these years? How in the world would all my kids take this?

Reality Hits

Nothing really prepares someone for a situation like this. Even my mom’s stroke did not really prepare me for all of the changes and trials we were about to face. First of all, my mom is elderly. She was having open heart surgery and we knew going into it that there could be serious complications. My husband, for all appearances, seemed to be in good health.

One of the things I did not mention above is that my husband had his stroke nearly five hours away from home while we were staying at my aunt’s for a funeral.

My husband spent the next eight days in the hospital. I stayed the night at my aunt’s but was at the hospital during the day. Within a couple of days, we were to find out that my husband had a massive stroke in his right cerebellum. This is called a cerebellar stroke. And that is why the doctor didn’t recognize it for what it was. Cerebellar strokes are less than 10% of all strokes; some say they are less than 3%. These type of strokes seem more like vertigo or even a really bad migraine, with symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, some slurred speech.

My husband’s face did not droop. He still had the use of his limbs and his strength was the same, but his coordination was off. He could talk and make sense but he couldn’t think as clearly and so forth. The doctor told us that if you had to choose an area to have a massive stroke that was probably the best. That said, it was still a stroke.

It wasn’t until months later that I realize just how close my husband had come to death.

For a long while my husband just wanted to recover so life could go back to the way it was. It is nearly six months since that stroke. My husband is still not the same and he may never be the same. That is a hard reality. But even if he were fully back to his old self, the truth is, there is no going back.

My husband had a stroke. There will always be that thing in the back of my mind that asks, “Is this going to happen again?” We have had to make a lot of choices along the way. We had to make choices about medication, about lifestyle, about work, about the future. We will have to make more choices, I am sure.

The Lord is My Strength and Shield

Thus far, I have not shared how the Lord met us in all of our struggles, or how He provided beyond anything we could not have imagined. I have not shared how in the face of the greatest challenge of his life, my husband was sustained and carried along by the Lord. I have not shared how God used my children to strengthen me when I grew weary or how He grew them up in their own faith. All of these things have been and continue to be an integral part of our ongoing story, and I am sure they will be shared in greater measure here, but for now, it is enough to say that the grace of the Lord is real.