I am 27 - & I had a stroke.
I had another idea for a blog post this week - I definitely didn't expect this to happen. This blog post is an expansion of the post I put on IG from my hospital room yesterday. If you know me or been following me for a while, you know I'm always on GO. I'm an insomniac so sleep doesn't come easy. I often stay up until 2 or 3am & back at it around 6:30/7am. Between my dogs, my business, my hustle, and my family - rest is rare. As much as I preach about self-care, I don't practice it like I should. On 10/10/19 it all caught up with me.
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The week prior had been super stressful for me. The morning of was another normal morning of me waking up exhausted. I walked my 4 dogs, then went to the DMV. It was 7:30am, but the line was outside of the door. I thought "to hell with this, I'll come back later." My mama needed me to take her somewhere, so I went and took her. That took forever due to the morning traffic. After dropping her off, I went back to the DMV. The line was still long as hell, so I was going to go to Monroe (because they never had a line). As I got ready to hit 485, the right side of my face went numb. I brushed it off as stress, but it didn't go away and my anxiety went through the roof. I went by my house and sat in the parking lot. I knew something wasn't right, so I went to CMC Pineville. Well, they were triaging patients in the waiting room (GHETTO) - I quickly left that hospital, hopped on 485 and went to Novant in Matthews.
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I was immediately pulled to the back and told that I'd be undergoing a stroke workup. I had a CT scan, was being poked and prodded on both sides by nurses try to find my tiny veins (I'm a hard stick, as they call it). I was given a "clot buster" - a strong blood thinner called tPA. Because of the potential brain bleeding effects, I was transferred to the Neuro ICU downtown. I was miserable for the 24 hours I was there. They didn't have snacks because most of the patients were unconscious or suffered major strokes and couldn't eat, so I ate wayyy more ice cream than I should have. They didn't have a bathroom with a door. Nurses and Therapists were in and out every 2 minutes. Idk why people think you get rest in a hospital - cuz you DON'T.
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After my MRI the next day, the doctor came in and said she didn't see any permanent damage to my brain because I caught it early (GO ME!). She did notice that I had a brain lesion that wasn't there last year. It's more than likely caused from Lupus and it can get worse or I can develop more if I don't get enough rest.
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Millennials - I really want us to understand that REST is just as important as work. We are a generation of hustlers and #TeamNoSleep. That is not the way. God forced me to sit the hell down and in doing so, I lost out on about $400. Being self-employed, I don't have PTO. I don't have sick leave - so when I miss out on money it's gone...or I can grind harder to get it back. This time I'ma just let it go. Could I use that money? Of course! But will I be okay without it? Absolutely.
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It's high time for me to make life changes and adopt better time management skills. I'm always ripping and running, working on 233875 things at once. All of that stopped yesterday when I walked out of that hospital. I'm literally killing myself working everyday of the week. It's gonna be hard sitting down sometimes but it's better to sit down now and rest than to end up back in the hospital - or worse.