I Had 7 Strokes in a Year and Am Still Here to Write About It

It would pass, I told myself, having no idea that this was the harbinger of things to come.

The cause: A mystery

Five days later, I had a second stroke. Two days after that, a third, after which I lost my ability to understand or express speech, a condition known as global aphasia. The rest of the strokes — an additional four — happened in rapid succession, at least one week apart, each attack displaying different symptoms and varying degrees of intensity. For example, during my second stroke, the walls appeared to shake violently; my legs lost function, and I sank to the floor, holding on to the edge of the bed for support.

By mid-October, I was in the hospital for longer than I’d ever been, unable to speak, write or comprehend what I was reading. Two fingers on my right hand would not move, and I even lost the power of imagination, which is caused by damage to the parietal and occipital lobes. 

For 10 days, doctors worked to find the reason why a relatively young woman, age 53 and physically active, was having multiple strokes, and more importantly, what could be done to stop them. Specialists confirmed that it was not genetic; that I didn’t inherit the predisposition to create blood clots, nor was the culprit cancer lurking undetected.

The reason remains a mystery today. 

Joyce Sampson, who survived seven strokes, works out with her niece Kennedy Essex at the Prince George's Sports and Learning Complex on Sunday, August 18, 2024, in Landover, MD.

Cheriss May

Recovery: There’s no magic pill

Nearly 800,000 people in the U.S. have a stroke each year — that’s one every 40 seconds — and it takes a life every three minutes and 11 seconds. I know I was lucky. My body was spared the indignities of paralysis that many endure after a stroke, and I regained the ability to speak in a matter of weeks, though the injuries to my brain’s right hemisphere caused other cognitive-communication damage.

I could read a complex sentence but could not tell you what it meant, and two-step instructions were impossible to follow. If faced with a conversation in a crowded space, all I could decipher was noise. There was anterograde and retrograde amnesia, which resulted in the inability to retain new information and to remember people and events from the past. I had trouble organizing thoughts and ideas and difficulty identifying time and place. My balance was off, too, and sometimes, the surface underneath my feet felt soft and squishy, like walking in heels on a marshmallow floor.

The effects of many of my deficits caught me by surprise. I got lost on a city bus in a part of town that I once knew by heart. I discovered that I could no longer count during a cash withdrawal at the bank. At a busy intersection, I walked into oncoming traffic even though I knew that the red pedestrian signal meant stop.

On separate occasions at home, I picked up the sharp end of a knife, splattered steaming coffee on an upside-down cup and poured a glass of ammonia rather than lemonade on the kitchen counter.

Recovery is a lifelong process; there’s no magic pill to make it all better, and I have had to work really hard at it. I joined stroke support groups to learn about resources and to get that much-needed emotional support. Through occupational and language therapy, I regained use of my right hand to write simple sentences.

As a former journalist, I was determined to write professionally again — something I was told I likely wouldn’t be able to do — so I started working with the George Washington University Speech and Hearing Center, where graduate student clinicians see patients for a modest fee.

Every semester for two years, I’d meet a new clinician and we’d work on memory, concentration and reading comprehension. We tackled functional skills (such as leaving an intelligible voicemail message), processing information in the midst of distractions and understanding social cues. 

I joined a stroke awareness group to educate the public about the signs and symptoms of stroke and its risk factors — I even organized a fitness fair for National Stroke Awareness Month (May) — and I prioritized regular exercise and healthy eating habits.

Importantly, I have started writing professionally again — and for national publications, a dream come true. It hasn’t been easy, as memory deficits, word retrieval and challenges organizing thoughts and ideas still come into play. So do the balance issues and marshmallow floors, but with help, I have learned to manage much of it.

I still have to separate household cleaners from beverages on my kitchen countertop, so I don’t accidentally drink a glass of Pine-Sol instead of lemonade. But I am grateful that I have the brain capacity to know the difference.