Another hole-in-the-heart story about an unexpected stroke

A story similar to mine - a stroke that came out of nowhere. One woman's story about the undiscovered hole in the heart can lead to a stroke:

A still shot of the repair of my hole in the heart.
Click here to read more about it.

“I had four strokes,” Dean said. “A clot ran up from my leg, broke off a piece into my lung and the other half went into a hole in my heart that I didn't know I had and it went into my head and sprayed into four strokes.”

It’s called patent foramen ovale (PFO), Latin for “open oval window.” It is a small hole located in the upper chamber of the heart, which makes it possible for a baby in utero to get blood from the placenta through the umbilical cord to the heart, but it typically closes a few months after birth.

Stroke patients can keep recovering, even after a year

One takeaway from a recent story about stroke recovery shows something to remember - "it's highly unethical to say nothing can be done after 12 months" in recovery. Personally, it took me years to get back to my almost-100 percent recovery. Stroke recovery can be incremental.

Now, will horses and music definitely help? One small study doesn't prove that it does, but it's worth studying further. Read how long-term stroke survivors believe they do better with horse, music therapy:

A small Swedish study of stroke patients finds that activities such as horseback riding and rhythm-and-music therapy can help them feel like they're recovering faster, even if their stroke occurred years earlier.

Finding the right words - the challenge of aphasia

June is Aphasia Awareness Month. And until 19 years ago, I had no idea what the word meant.

But I know now. It's a language disorder, leaving some people unable to speak. Others can speak but struggle to find the right words.

That was me. I still have the list of words I said to my wife after my 1998 stroke: towrith, rice, torithe. And I was trying to say the name of a city I'd visited not long before -- Jonesboro. Through time and with the help of a speech therapist, family and friends, I'm almost 100 percent back.

I can still remember frequently swapping pronouns -- referring to a male as "she" or a female as "he," a common occurrence. Or leaving out small words. Or using the wrong tense -- such as saying "worked" instead of "working."