I had a medical incident recently that briefly robbed me of my speech. For me, losing my words is like the great dancer Shakira finding out she needs hip-replacement surgery.
It happened. I would end up — days after my 75th birthday — with my first night in a hospital.
It was the last day of March. I sat in my recliner munching my Honey Nut Cheerios. I had forgotten to tell my wife, Karen, something, so I rose, bowl in hand, to find her.
I wanted to say this: “Alison (our daughter) called earlier. She got her car fixed, and it only cost $20.” Simple, right? I could get no sound out of my mouth except for the word “twenty.”
It felt like an out-of-body experience. Was I having a stroke? I took my blood pressure. It was quite high, something like 180/90. But after a couple of minutes, my speech returned, and over the next several hours my pressure gradually came down.
The next afternoon I called a doctor. “Go to the emergency room,” she said.
Not Tampa International Airport
Over the next 24 hours, I came to learn that I had experienced something commonly called a TIA (no, not the airport, and they prefer TPA, anyway), a transient ischemic attack. Often called a ministroke, it happens when there is a brief interruption of blood flow to the brain.
Many people experience them, and as you age you are more at risk. Risk factors increase with heart disease, obesity, diabetes, smoking and anxiety. With the exception of anxiety, I can cross out the other factors.
The good news is that a single brief incident need not cause permanent damage. Just because you had a TIA once does not mean that it will occur again. The bad news is that a TIA can portend a full-blown stroke, causing permanent damage, or even death.
My emergency room visit led to a series of tests, an overnight stay in the stroke unit and encounters with three doctors and a series of nurses. My blood pressure remained pretty high. “It’s high because I am in the hospital!” I argued. The blood tests, the brain scan and the physical neurological tests imposed by the doctors all came out normal. An MRI offered the result, and I am paraphrasing, that “his brain is shrinking at a normal rate for someone of his age.”
Please consider all this as prologue to the most peculiar part of my story. It was a Friday, and I was looking forward to watching the semifinal games of the women’s NCAA college basketball tournament. Maybe it is a sign of a sports addiction that you think the loss of an opportunity to watch a game is more important than the potential loss of your good health.
