Hi everyone. My first message here (or anywhere to do with this actually).
I was having what I thought were post COVID issues last June, however as soon as the respiritory consultant saw and spoke to me in person, he knew and refered me for an urgent MRI. Within a few days, I was told I’d had a Cerebellum Stroke. I believe this was a silent stroke, as I did not suffer from normal classic symptoms at a specific time.
Back in June/July August and September, by symptoms were all to do with ‘brain slowness’, eg unable to speak quickly, unable to focus or concentrate, unable to drive etc, and also MASSIVE tiredness. I would regularly and uncontrolably fall asleep when doing something, talking to someone etc. I once nearly fell asleep once walking, which was very odd. That was all before I actually had the diagnosis of Stroke, which I received in September.
Since then, to add to the confusion, I let my neurologist know that I had a previous MRI scan around 4 years ago after a car accident (we were rear ended by a drunk driver). He immediately asked for the details and emailed requesting sight of those scans. He then called me in a week later to let me know that the Cerebellum stroke shows on the MRI scan from 4 years ago. How it wasn’t seen then, I still don’t know…
All in all, I was therefore told that I had a Stroke in the past (potentially 4 years ago due to this car accident). However, I had absolutely no symptoms then, apart from ongoing near daily migrains and tiredness, which lasted approximately 4 months.
To make things even more confusing now, whilst the slowness at talking and thinking is under control and much much better than it was 6 months ago (it’s still not the same it was before June 2022), around October I started developing quite bad motion sickness, dizzyness and co-ordination problems. These were often bad, and stopped me driving again, but also stopped me being a passenger in a car. This got to it’s worst after some vestibular testing last Monday, when I developed double vision for approximately 5-6 days. The double vision thankfully disappeared over the weekend.
Approximately 2 months ago, I started developing some physical symptons however:
- Dizziness and lack of coordination has got worse. I have stumbled a number of times now, and in the last 2 weeks now, have fallen and/or walked into objects a few times.
- noticeable weakness in my right arm, painful arm when doing simple things such as brushing teeth, hoovering etc. Arm sometimes feels like someone is hitting it.
- weakness and pain in the fingers on both hands - they almost feel bruised to the touch, if that makes sense? Also, my fingers and hand feel very cold a lot of the time.
- constantly mixing up my words when speaking
- Only able to drive very short distances, and only if I’m feeling OK at that time
I’m not sure how to explain this, but a lot of things also just feel wrong at the moment. For example, I walked into the side of a door yesterday and banged my knee really hard into it. At the time, I was in massive pain, but it only lasted about 20 seconds. After that, my knee (and in fact lower leg) almost feel like they’re not attached/not there anymore?! I can still feel it, move it etc, but it all just feels weird.
I’m seeing my consultant (after some time now) this Thursday, so hope to get some more answers then.
Initially, it seemed to be a case of lets see how it all goes - they were expecting it to improve quickly, however now that things seems to be worse rather than better, I have no idea what to do…
Thanks for listening,
Mal
