When Lexi Eddy sent Snapchats to her friends earlier this year, they instantly knew something was wrong.
She had just collapsed out of her chair at her after-school job at a nursing home in Atwater, Ohio, and didn’t understand what was going on.
The 18-year-old’s face was drooping on one side, her words were slurred, and her left hand hung limp — but no one knew she was in the middle of a life-threatening stroke.
‘What’s wrong with your face?’ her friends frantically messaged. ‘It looks like you’re having a stroke. Are you good?’
Coworkers helped her sit back up, but at that point, she could no longer move her left hand. Water dribbled from her mouth. Every sentence was gibberish.
When her friend mentioned it could’ve been a stroke, she was taken by emergency services to the local hospital, where doctors determined she needed more advanced care.
She was rushed to the Cleveland Clinic in Akron, where doctors delivered the shocking diagnosis: a blocked artery had cut off blood flow to her brain.
Dr Yousef Mohammad, the neurologist who treated Lexi, stressed that rapid intervention was critical to dissolve the clot and restore blood flow to her brain or face irreversible brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation.
18-year-old Lexi Eddy suffered a stroke on the right side of her brain, causing the left side of her body to go numb
He said: We use the term ‘time is brain’ because early intervention is essential. Every minute that passes without opening the blocked vessel, one million neuron cells will die.
‘That’s why we act very quickly to try and open the vessel and restore blood flow to the brain.’
Eddy completely lost control of the left side of her body, indicating the stroke had occurred in the right hemisphere of her brain.
Her mother Melissa, who met her daughter at the local hospital before being transferred to the Cleveland Clinic, said: ‘As they’re taking her out, I’m kind of doing my own little assessment.
‘I could see her face clearly. I asked her to squeeze my hand and there was nothing there. So then in my head, I was just like, “Crap, this is a stroke.”’
Once they arrived at the Cleveland Clinic, Melissa said: ‘It felt like 90 minutes of pure craziness.’
With time working against them – treating within three hours of the stroke affords the best possible outcomes – doctors quickly administered an IV dose of a TNK-tPA (tenecteplase) to dissolve blood clots in the blocked blood vessel.
Eddy said: ‘[In the moment] I can’t comprehend all of it and I just start sobbing.
‘There are people saying, “Push the medicine through! Push the medicine through now!” When I started sobbing, that’s when it all just really hit me.’
The doctor warned if the medication failed to dissolve the clot, Lexi would require brain surgery, but a follow-up CT scan confirmed the treatment worked.
Eddy had just collapsed out of her chair at her after-school job at a nursing home in Atwater, Ohio . Coworkers helped her sit back up, but at that point, she could no longer move her left hand. A colleague called emergency services to take her to the local hospital
Within about an hour of receiving the drug, she began regaining feeling, movement, and speech.
Eddy said: ‘The second I got out of the CT scan, a nurse came over and squeezed my hand. Before that, my dad had been holding my hand, and I hadn’t felt anything.
‘But this time, I said, “Oh, wait, I can feel it now.” The feeling wasn’t 100 percent yet, but it was much better than before.’
Within four days spent at the hospital, Eddy nearly fully recovered movement in her left side, with her facial drooping, slurred speech, and headaches disappearing.
Meanwhile, Dr Mohammad’s team launched an intensive workup to pinpoint what caused her stroke in the first place.
A battery of tests ruled out tumors, an irregular heartbeat, blood deficiencies and other factors.
But they did find Eddy had Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO), a small, flap-like hole between the upper chambers of the heart (atria) that failed to close after birth.
About 25 percent of Americans have the condition and it is usually harmless.
With time working against them – treating a stroke within three hours of the stroke affords the best possible outcomes. They administered an IV drug to break up the blood clot in Eddy’s brain, which was successful
In some cases, however, like Eddy’s, the flap that didn’t fuse shut can allow blood clots to bypass the lungs and reach the brain, causing a stroke.
‘Because a PFO is so common, we have to eliminate every other possible cause,’ Dr Mohammad said. ‘Once we do that, we are left with PFO and then decide if there is a relationship between the PFO and the stroke.’
To confirm, EDDY’S medical team administered the RoPE test, which measures whether a PFO likely unleashed a stroke-causing clot. For EDDY, the score was a high 88 percent probability that her heart’s tiny hole was the hidden culprit.
Roughly 795,000 people in the United States experience a stroke each year.
Advanced age is a leading risk factor, with approximately half of all strokes occurring in people over 75 and a third in those over 85.
But about 10 to 15 percent of strokes occur in children and adults under 45, and this number is rising due to a confluence of lifestyle factors like diet and obesity, rising rates of underlying chronic conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes, and undiagnosed heart conditions.
Just weeks after graduating high school – and before starting her teaching degree at Kent State – Eddy will undergo a minimally invasive procedure at the Cleveland Clinic to seal the tiny hole in her heart.
Just weeks after graduating high school – and before starting her teaching degree at Kent State – Eddy will undergo a minimally invasive procedure at the Cleveland Clinic to seal the tiny hole in her heart
According to Dr Mohammad, this will bring her risk of experiencing another stroke to near zero.
Eddy, meanwhile, sees the experience as an opportunity to get the best out of her life.
‘Before my stroke, I was wasting my time and energy on things I shouldn’t be. I wasn’t happy.
‘After my stroke, I realized you can’t take what you have for granted.’
‘Life is going to be both hard and good,’ she added. ‘And I want to do everything for the greater good. Anything that brings joy to other people is what I want to be doing.’
