Her 42-year old husband had a stroke, but she knew what to do next.

Welcome back to the show. Four caregivers about caregivers hosted by a caregiver. This is Peter Rosalberger bringing you three decades plus experience to help you stay strong and healthy as you take care of someone who is not.

And why is that important? Well, again, if you go down, what happens to your loved one? If you're not in a good place, and when I say go down, I don't mean just, you know, you get the flu or something. If something happens to you where you are, you are taken out of the picture for an extended period of time financially, emotionally, physically, professionally, all of those things, it can get really, really gnarly for you as a caregiver and your loved one. So that's why we do the show.

800-688-9522, 800-688-9522. Strokes. Strokes are a ugly specter that hang over the heads of so many Americans. And we all think that those things are for the elderly.

But they're not. And my guest today is a friend who has been through this process. Her husband was 42 years old. And she's with us today. Sandy, you there? I'm here. Hey, this is Sandy Floria and she and her husband, Bram, longtime friends of ours.

And she's out in Texas. And this, thank you for being willing to share this story. You actually worked in an environment where you understood strokes. So you saw some things that other people may not have. But tell, let's go back to the beginning and just tell the story of what happened.

Okay. Well, thanks for having me on, Peter. It's always exciting for me to be able to share our story because it continues to remind me of just God's goodness in our lives. But the story goes that we had been traveling a lot through the summer.

This was the summer of 2009. And we had just gotten home from a long trip. And we had a small child, a baby, and three older kids.

We had gone back to work doing our everyday things and came home, get ready for dinner. And my husband, Bram, was feeding the baby. And he dropped the baby food jar on the floor. And so he made a mess.

So we had to clean it up. And he just kind of sat there staring funny. And he started feeding the baby again.

And in my rush around everything just to get the dinner on the table, he dropped the baby food jar again. And it made me angry, quite honestly. And I said, I just looked at him and said, What is wrong with you?

Why are you doing this? And he had a really confused look on his face. And I said, Honey, stick your tongue out. And he said, I don't know what you mean. And so I showed him, stick your tongue out. And he couldn't really stick his tongue out. And so at that point, I said to our older daughter who was 13 at the time, Call 911.

Dad's having a stroke. And then call a neighbor. And I took, carried, not carried, but I walked Bram to the bedroom and I began to pinch him and poke him. And he was going unconscious and tried to keep him awake until the paramedics arrived. And they arrived quickly, thankfully.

And we live kind of far out in the country. So I was a little concerned, but they arrived quickly. We got him to the hospital within an hour window. And he was able to receive some medications that helped him, that probably saved his life.

Let me just jump in real quick. When the paramedics got there, they're transporting, what did they do for him in that process? What happened during the whole, from the moment they got there to the hospital? Can they do anything? Well, not, I don't want to say not really, but they don't have the drugs with them, the kind of medications, or they didn't at the time.

They may now, I just don't know. But the paramedic told me, one of the paramedics said, oh, I think he just has a migraine. I think he's just dehydrated or something of that. And I, at that point, realized I'm going to have to fight for this. I'm going to have to fight for my husband because they didn't seem to believe me. And so I just said, no, he's having a stroke. And this is a serious situation.

We need to get him to the hospital right away. Now how did you know this? Well, I had worked in a facility, a rehab facility for several years before I was married and worked with closed-brain injury patients and a lot of stroke patients. And so I was able to recognize that that's what was happening to BRAM. And I feel very fortunate that I was prepared for that.

I didn't know I needed to be prepared for that, but that's what was us. And I looked, I just looked up earlier, because you've mentioned wanting to know the signs, what to look for. And there's a lot of websites that will give you just really simple things.

But one of the best ones that I saw was called FAST. And it's just the letter F-A-S-T. And it's look at their face, ask them to smile or stick out their tongue. And if it pulls to one side or droops to one side, that's a good indicator. If their arms or if they're unable to lift one of their arms over their head all the way, if it pulls downward, that's another good indicator.

If their speech is slurred or confused, that's an indicator. And then time is for tea and you call 911 right away. There are life-saving procedures if you get to the hospital in a short window of time. So this all happened and it, I mean, he was 42. I mean, this is, there was no warning, nothing. Right.

Right. Well, we had known that Bram's cholesterol was high. He did things, he washed his diet and exercised to keep his cholesterol levels down. But what we didn't know is that it was something that was not one of those kind of cholesterols that can be just treated with diet. It had to have medications to treat it because it had gotten really high. And we had just lost sight of that in some ways and had gotten more inactive in a lot of ways as we do when we get older sometimes.

And so it was something that just got out of hand for us, just kind of out of sight, out of mind. And so he was not prepared or was not aware that his cholesterol levels had gotten quite so high. Now Bram's situation is a little unique in that his carotid arteries are called tortured arteries, which means they corkscrew instead of just going up into the brain like most people have.

So that was another factor in the stroke in that when his cholesterol levels had gotten so high and his blood had gotten clotted, it was more difficult for it to get up into his brain with every piece of his heart. But you didn't really know all this prior to this, did you? No, we didn't know that. That was something that was new to us when we found out. And the doctor had asked, did you know this? You know, when they did all of the MRIs and CT scans and angios and all of that.

And of course we didn't know. And he's made a full recovery, but it's not been an easy one, has it? Right. He is back to health and normal. He has made a full recovery.

It's taken a lot of years. I mean, it's been, it's 10 years this year and there's been a lot of rehab and speech therapy. He also ended up having to have heart surgery. They found a hole in his heart, which contributed also to the stroke and that had to be repaired. And that was about six years ago. And yeah, and he's on medication.

He'll be on blood centers and cholesterol meds for the rest of his life. But like you said, he is fully recovered and you know, when people meet him, I don't think anyone would ever suspect that he had had a stroke. All right. Well, let me switch gears. How are, how recovered are you? Um, some days are better than others. We travel a lot with, um, our ministry and so sometimes we don't travel together. So when Bram travels by himself, I do get find myself, you know, anxious at times. Um, but I have to just trust the Lord because those things are unpredictable.

And again, you know, you can't live in fear and have to choose not to do that. Well, it's been 10 years, but I would imagine that the first, at least the first part of it, I mean, you know, the last time I saw you guys, you were fairly calm and, and didn't look like you were just freaking out everywhere, but that you'd put some time between it. But I imagine the first several years with small children, this was a pretty much a nightmare for you.

Well, yes, I think so. Um, we homeschooled our children at the time, which was a gift from God actually, because we were able to be together as a family all the time, every day. And that's what we needed to recover. I think we needed, the children needed that.

They needed to see that their dad was getting better and they were able to go to rehab with him sometimes and would even help with his rehab and quiz him on his speech therapy and other things. And, um, would make, you know, we made a game of it sometimes. And I think that that was healing for all of us. And we learned even more so to laugh a lot and, you know, our children. I hope it wasn't, I was, I hope it was your sense of humor, not his, because I think he needs a lot of help in that area.

And that's a totally separate show, but, uh, I'll be glad to offer some kind of counseling in that, but no, I'm just kidding. Well, now let me, let me ask you, uh, a couple of questions on this. When you went through this process and you're doing all this, um, you threw yourself into learning about it. Both of you did, your whole family did. What's changed for you as a family because of this? I mean, have you gone completely into a different type of eating a lifestyle, physical lifestyle, what's changed? Well, um, yes, yes and no. I'll say yes, or we have changed a lot in the way our, um, the way we eat, the way I cooked.

I'm from Texas and of course everyone knows that if it doesn't have bacon grease or gravy with it, then it's not edible. So, um, that had to change and I had to learn how to cook again in different ways. And, um, so that was a process for me. I mean, it was one I was happy to, um, to understand that it was a process and I think, um, we became more active as a family together. We like to hike and that's kind of what we do.

If we go on vacation, we go hiking, climbing, um, we're outdoorsy and, um, so that's been part of the change for us in just exercising more. Um, and we are together as much as we can be. I mean, that's important to us. We see how quickly things can change and how quickly life becomes fragile. And so it has been very important for us over the years, even though our two oldest have moved away from home, um, and live far away from home in other States, we as often as possible get together and just have family time.

So I think that's something that we always thought was important before. Now, even more so, we make it, make a bigger effort to be together. What about spiritually? What about spiritually? What changed?

We just got a couple minutes here. What changed spiritually? Well, I think my prayers changed, um, and wasn't, you know, God keep this from happening or that from happening, but it was God sustain us, sustain me and be my strength. And, um, one of the things, one of the Psalms that just absolutely gives me the most strength is Psalm 18. And I won't read the whole thing, but it just, it talks about how God just absolutely comes to rescue us in our deepest needs and our most desperate situations. And even though there were moments that we had no idea whether Bram would survive the first 24 hours or 48 hours, he was in a coma and we just didn't know, but God was so present for us and such a sustainer that I can't not trust him in that. It's just, it's not possible for me. And I know that.