Awaken Your Path: A Journey Through Spiritual Healing & Plant-Based Living
Stroke
I experienced three ischemic strokes between 2021 and 2023:
The first was in October 2021 when I was first diagnosed with bladder cancer after a summer of decreasing body weight. I recovered within a week and did not experience neurological issues that I could detect. So I resumed weekly chemo treatments and continued my remote role in talent sourcing recruitment.
I liked the job that I had, but I was recruited for a larger virtual role to be a dedicated global talent sourcing trainer, which was my dream job, at tech giant NVIDIA in June 2022.
The second stroke occurred in November 2022, which surprised my doctors but again I did not detect neurological cognitive decline and returned to work within a week. I switched from an oral pill version of Apixaban (Eliquis) to an injectionable version of Lovenox, which was deemed by my oncologist as more effective.
However, five months later (April 2023), I experienced a third stroke that affected the other side of my brain and that was devastating.
My math and computer skills that had been a strong suit up to then, now escaped me. I couldn’t even figure out differences between time zones and calendar dates. My speech slurred drastically as I tried to enunciate words that I thought were clear in my head. The only reason I was able to deliver a series of trainings in November-December 2023 and January 2024 was because I had created slides with web links that reminded me of key points and pre-recorded short online website videos.
I went on medical leave in May 2024 and never returned. In retrospect, I think subconsciously the loss of my work was a loss of my life purpose.
Shortly after staring medical leave in July 2024, I couldn't feel my legs and we learned that was being caused by a hematoma in my abdomen and it shut down the nerves in my feet and legs (particularly on the right side).
In November 2024, I experienced another hematoma. This time, it primarily shot the nerves in left foot and leg. My wife determined that it was due to receiving too much Lovenox blood thinner to prevent further strokes. Since then, I am using a minimal level of blood thinner which has alleviated that.
However, it took over 8 months to regain sensation in my right toes and I am rebuilding the muscles in my right leg in 2026 to reduce reliance on the walker. I am still trying to regain feeling in my left toes and foot, but I can move my left leg pretty well (go figure!).
To this day, more than three years after the last stroke, basic math is hard and programming seems like a foreign language, and I have occasional issues enunciating words clearly. However, I am trying to retrain my brain .with mental exercises to use different parts of my mind to make up for whatever deficits I have lost (particularly in the third stroke).
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