This happened two years ago. My mother-in-law called my girlfriend in panic, telling that she could not stop vomiting and was feeling awkwardly nauseous.
She also said she’d had double vision since the morning, and experienced a formidable headache as well. Those three symptoms together form one of the true red flags of a stroke or other serious neurological condition. My MIL knew it (she is a retired radiologist), and my girlfriend knew it too.
So we drove her to the ER of my girlfriend’s hospital (my MIL obviously couldn’t drive herself), and even in the car the vomiting continued.
In the hospital, immediately a number of tests were carried out — a physical exam, blood tests, ECG, MRI scans — and not much later it turned out that she’d had a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA): a mini-stroke in which the symptoms usually go away within 24 hours of the attack. It often is a messenger of an impending stroke.
What was even more shocking is that the scans revealed — through the occurrence of many lesions (white spots, in this case) on the images — that she had had dozens of TIAs over the years, most probably with less severe symptoms but very scare all the same !
In hindsight, it explained the many balance problems she had experienced in the last couple of years (and several painful falls as a consequence).
Since the TIA, she has been taking aspirin (to prevent blood clots and stroke) and pills to control her blood pressure on a daily basis, but that is not the most invasive consequence of the attack. The most radical change is the sheer fear she has developed of more balance problems, and of an impending stroke.
It makes her every move so much slower than before —
As if the TIA has constricted her in time.
SOURCES: A cerebral angiogram showing a carotid aneurysm associated with stroke, through Mayo Clinic.
