Thanks to learning FAST weeks before her stroke, P Martin was able to catch it quickly which is another reminder that educating yourself on the signs of stroke are so important. Read P’s account of experiencing a stroke, recovering, living with a condition called Moyamoya while always keeping a sense of humor.
Allow me to set the scene. It’s 2015. There I was, working at my factory job in the tiny town of White House, Tennessee. All of a sudden, my left arm began tingling. It was hard for me to lift it, so I started relying more on my right hand. My family vacation to Florida was coming up in the next few days. I didn’t think much of what was happening to my body physically. I thought maybe I was stressing myself out into having these symptoms.
The next few days went by and no sign of those symptoms. My thought now was that I had strained my arm somehow and brushed the whole thing off to the side with the intent to worry about it again after my vacation. The universe definitely had different plans for me because the first night we were in Panama City Beach, July 29th, my girlfriend at the time woke me up in the middle of the night saying I was coughing weird. The weeks leading up to this night we had been seeing an influx of FAST stroke ads and since I come from a lineage of stroke survivors, (my grandmother has had three in total and my mother has had one) she decided to utilize that.
My face was drooping, my speech was off so she woke my mother up to take me to the nearest hospital. I don’t remember feeling much at the time, other than confusion. I was quiet on the way to the hospital. We weren’t in a familiar place and the GPS didn’t seem to be helping, but by the time we made it to the hospital, I had lost complete mobility of my left (and also my dominant) arm and leg. The doctors were baffled as to why a 23-year-old had lost the use of their arm. It was dead weight. The next thing to go was my balance. I straight up looked like something out of The Walking Dead. They ran me through the absolute ringer in tests and deducted that I was just suffering from a debilitating headache.
During my three days (out of my seven vacation days) in the hospital, my significant 
other at the time and I used comedy to soften the blow. There’s a photograph that I took of myself while in the hospital bed when we were chanting “PCB 2K15!” at each other, smiling and laughing at the irony of the situation. Don’t think I would have come out of that if it wasn’t for her reminding me that there can be humor amongst anything – even tragedy.
I’ll spare you the weird stuff I experienced from this fresh way of life with half of my body no longer working. Let’s just say, I had a lot of challenges ahead. This alone was devastating for me. My whole family had been artists. In my younger years, that’s what you would find me doing – drawing. The thought of having to retrain my brain to use my right hand instead of my left was exhausting.
Fast forward to after we made it home. I was sent directly to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where I was diagnosed with a rare brain disease called Moyamoya, which causes the arteries in the brain to develop much more narrow and smaller than what they were intended to be. Still, to this day, my father does not know how to pronounce it. Come to find out, that arm tingling and weakness from weeks before was a TIA, aka a mini-stroke. My body was trying to warn me and I had no clue.
The day I got the call from my neurosurgeon is still clear as day. We were on our way out the door to go grocery shopping when I got it. The significant other had walked out after I told her to leave me behind and start the car. I was told that I would need brain surgery for my Moyamoya. Two to be exact. I remember hanging up the phone when the conversation ended, sitting back down on the couch with my head in my hands, crying. I did this for no longer than five minutes before I stood up, wiped my face of all the tears and headed downstairs.
Another fast-forward to today, almost four years after those events. Both surgeries were as successful as they could be. Unfortunately, Moyamoya is a progressive disease, but with a relatively normal life expectancy, so I may have to have a third surgery at some point to correct my blood flow.
The after effects of stroke follow me wherever I go. There are moments of aphasia where my brain blanks out and I forget simple words or explanations. I still have TIA’s to this day, sometimes weekly. It’s all still really scary. I find myself slipping into other worlds a lot, other universes – extended universes, if ya know what I’m saying. Because even if they are super dramatic and overplayed, they’re my comfort zones.
Comedy is huge for me. I feel like if we aren’t able to laugh at ourselves, our outlooks will dramatically dim. I’m gonna say this and try to make it at least Joker-ish as possible, (because it’s an indisputable fact that he is the most incredible villain of all time) but laugh often. It’s not only good for the soul, but it can keep you sane. (Shoutout to super sanity.)
Thanks for taking the time to listen to me drone on. It’s appreciated. If you’re wanting to reach out to me for post-stroke advice, Moyamoya questions, or to go back and forth on why Gotham was a great show and didn’t deserve to be canceled, find me at the links below.
To continue to follow P Martin’s journey follow her at @thepmartian on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Connect with more stroke and brain injury survivors on the YouSoRock Facebook Support Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/yousorock.
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