There is life after a stroke.
Wanda Walton and her family had just spent the afternoon in the Los Angeles area. She was driving home on the freeway when her left side went numb.
“She swerved the car … and then she did it again,” her daughter Brittany Walton recalled. “I remember my dad asking her, calling her name like, ‘what’s wrong?’ And my mom didn’t say anything back.”
Wanda tried to speak but nothing came out. Her then-husband coached her to pull the minivan over. He got behind the wheel.
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Wanda then screamed as she suddenly had excruciating pain in the back of her head.
The Hospital Results
They raced to the hospital, where tests showed she was having a stroke. Doctors gave her the clot-busting drug tPA, short for tissue plasminogen activator.
Unbeknownst to Wanda, the headaches, dizziness, nausea, and blurred vision she’d had off and on in the weeks prior had been several transient ischemic attacks, or “mini-strokes.”
Hours after being admitted to the hospital, Wanda suffered a second, more severe stroke that paralyzed her left side.
