I am not one to expound upon my personal life but recent events have prompted me to share my travails in the fervent hope of helping the masses this holiday season in alerting you to a hidden danger, a danger that has the insidious potential of changing your life forever WITHOUT warning for no direct fault of your own. This event/danger just happened to me and was the most frightening thing I ever experienced.
Many of you reading this do not know me personally although thousands of you follow me daily across a multitude of social media sites I control so in a peripheral way we have interacted. My friends who have supported me thru this brutal nightmare KNOW who I am and at this point I wish to extend them ALL a heartfelt THANK YOU for their support, they know who they are. Seeing as my family is dead, my friends ARE my family.
To update, I am a cancer survivor since 2008, I was infected with a throat cancer which required a blanket radiation treatment over the entire head and neck region in addition to a chemo regimen. I beat it and I can honestly say it was the best thing that ever happened to me in that it dramatically altered my lifesyle and forcefully guided me into a healthy regimen that I have embraced to this very day.
Earlier last month I submitted to my yearly physical and my primary was thrilled with my numbers across the board as every metric showed marked improvement so I was buoyed by what turned out to be a false sense of complaceny regarding my health. Because I work hard at being healthy EVERY DAY by making the prudent diet and lifestyle choices it was a reassuring feeling to know those choices garnered positive impacts as I age, and galvanized me to continue these disciplines going forward.
But on Nov 30th I woke up paralyzed on my left side for no reason. Alarmed, I immediately made the decision to go to emergency after being prodded by a good friend to be proactive and do so which prompted a nine hour ordeal of tests to determine the cause. Astoundingly to me, the immediate consensus among the ETs who initially looked at me in emergency was I had a stroke. And after a battery of tests it was confirmed that indeed was the case.
But how can this be? Just mere weeks before I was given a clean and ROBUST positive bill of health with NO ISSUES that could even remotely suggest a heart attack or stroke risk which I had never had in my life of 68 years to that point. And the doctors at Good Samaritan hospital in Downers Grove Illinois who so expertly determined the true cause marvelled at my resilence in beating back MULTIPLE mini strokes reflected in the MRI, a situation no doubt spawned by my healthy lifestyle. And the reason universally espoused by my most astute team of doctors was it was NOT MY FAULT in any way, but a clogging of the carotid arteries totally caused by the blanket radiation I endured DECADES before. And because I acted proactively to address, there is a clear path to recovery to the minor motor skill impacts I am currently grappling with and insuring the issue is corrected FOREVER. I will be better than ever with a major risk eradicated as I move on in my life. And my mental capabilities untouched, a blessing.
I post this as a PSA. I am NOT vaccinated so the clotting issue was not potentially impacted by that which we have seen is a factor in some with these type situations. If you had a head or neck cancer treated in the early to mid 2000s with blanket radiation PLEASE get an MRI to insure the silent killer can be addressed becuse the cruelest irony would be to have your quality of life severely impacted by the lingering after effects of treatment that saved your life. If ONE PERSON catches this nightmare in advance this post will have been worth it.
Happy Holidays to you all
Respectfully MD