I was in my home office pulling e-mail one morning, and all of a sudden my heart felt
like it had skipped some beats, and it took off racing.
I got dizzy, so I went over to the sofa and laid down.
My husband was concerned so he came running over with the blood pressure cuff to see if
something was wrong with my blood pressure.
And he noticed that my right leg looked different from my left.
My right leg was as white and as cold as snow.
And I had blurriness in the vision of my right eye.
So long story short, we contacted the doctor and the doctor said "get to the emergency
room."
In the emergency room they said that I had blood clots, and a close call with a stroke
due to a condition I had never heard about--atrial fibrillation.
Atrial fibrillation, that means that the upper chambers are just kind of quivering, they're
not really pumping the blood rhythmically through the body like it should, and so the
blood is pooling in the upper chambers of the heart, and it can start to coagulate,
or clot.
And then at some point, that clot can be launched out through the body, up to the brain, and
cause a stroke.
The risk of stroke is five times greater than for those who don't have AFib.
And we actually find that the risk is even higher for women because women make up about
60% of all stroke victims.
We also know that because the clots grow much larger than other clots that are responsible
for strokes, as a result the clots tend to be so large that the death rate is about twice
the death rate from other kinds of strokes.
It's really important for patients to understand that they shouldn't stop their medications
without having a conversation with their doctor.
A lot of times patients feel like "oh I'm feeling better, I don't feel my AFib, I think
everything's fine, I'll just stop this medication, I really don't want to take it."
And then they have a stroke.
When I had AFib I was treated with blood thinners, anticoagulants, because I'd had blood clots
and a close call with a stroke on my first AFib episode.
But what I found was that I was never stable on blood thinners, so I felt like I was a
stroke walking around waiting to happen.
Fortunately, I was able to have a procedure, a minimally invasive surgical ablation, about
22 months after I was diagnosed, and fortunately, I've been AFib free for ten and a half years
now.
But I'm always looking over my shoulder to make sure that I don't go back into AFib.
Once I was AFib-free I couldn't stand on the sidelines and watch other people suffer with
AFib.
So I started a non-profit organization--StopAfib.org to help those who were living with this condition.
And that's not just the patients but the family members as well.
Celebrating a Year without A Stroke aligns with my personal mission of a stroke free
world.
It means raising awareness of AFib so that people who have it but don't know it get diagnosed
and treated before they have a stroke.
It means educating patients and their family members so they understand how to best manage
their AFib.
And how to avoid a stroke, heart failure, dementia, and other things that AFib can cause.
And it means the ability of patients and caregivers to advocate for their own care.
It means that we will see, and celebrate a year without a stroke.