Richard Horton woke up one morning needing to use the bathroom. He got out of bed, took a couple of steps, and stumbled into the wall.
The 55-year-old insurance broker told his then-wife, Bridgette Horton, he thought he might be having a stroke. It was the only thing that made sense. Still, he brushed it off and went back to bed.
A bit later, Bridgette was headed to a family funeral. He assured her he’d be fine. But before she left, she heard him talking to a client on the phone, and the things he said didn’t make sense.
“Why are you talking like that?” she said.
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“I don’t know,” Richard said.
She again asked if he was OK, and he said he felt fine.
After the funeral, the couple went to the emergency room for good measure. They expected to be in and out in a short time. Instead, tests revealed that he’d indeed had a stroke, the kind caused by a rupture of a weakened blood vessel in his brain.
RELATED: 5 Signs You’ve Already Had A Stroke and Didn’t Know It
A ticking time bomb
This, he soon learned, was the result of “a ticking time bomb in my body” that he’d been living with for over a decade.
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Richard had uncontrolled high blood pressure. Over time, it wreaked havoc on his blood vessels. He was so vulnerable that
