A “Babymoon” Then A Stroke

A "Babymoon" Then A Stroke

On our flight to Hawaii for our “babymoon” last June, Dave turned to me and asked, “Does my right eye look weird?”

It did. His pupil was asymmetrically dilated, a seeping pool of black that blocked out all of the beautiful green. He couldn’t see.

Two minutes later, Dave lost consciousness. We made an emergency landing in Fargo, N.D.

An ambulance whisked us to the Sanford Medical Center, as a team of medical personnel buzzed around him. “Does your husband smoke? Drink? Have a history of stroke in the family?”

No, no and no.

Dave — only 30 years old, a lifelong athlete, an aggravatingly healthy eater — had suffered an incredibly rare, often fatal stroke; a clot had blocked an artery to his brain, starving his neurons of critical oxygen, leaving several graveyards of dead cells in his mind. To read more from ALLISON PATAKI, click here.