kind of come against me,” she says. “Because I work for the IRS–I was a revenue officer– I’m out in the field dealing with taxpayers doing stuff like that. I’m a Black woman so it’s like oh you’re stressed you need to change your job–all these things– but not ‘Hey let’s do some invasive tests to see if there’s something else going on.’”
Going back and forth to the emergency room and dealing with dismissive and rude doctors became exhausting and frustrating for Carter-Williams and her family.
“I remember crying one time and he’s like ‘Why are you crying?’ and I was like because I feel like you could be doing more,” the mother and wife recalls adding that she felt defeated after constantly being told there was nothing wrong with her.
Months after having a heart attack, Carter-Williams suffered a stroke while at work.
“I can say this is the only morning that I woke up and I didn’t have pain and [a] headache. I wake up– I go to the office. Thirty minutes after getting to the office, I’m laughing with my manager you know cracking up– talking about our town hall meeting. I walk over to my desk sit down and I get a headache–a headache just came out of nowhere. Immediately I started feeling dizzy–my vision getting blurry and I remember feeling like I was paralyzed on the side of my body,” the IRS worker turned comedian shares. “My coworker said that she heard some sounds like somebody was struggling to make it out of the cubicle and she said I looked like I was having a stroke. She said my face looked a little bit droopy and I fainted. I don’t remember anything from there.”
Carter-Williams went to Baylor University Medical Center where doctors initially diagnosed her with multiple sclerosis and told her she’d also suffered a seizure. After seeing a neurologist and spending around 18-20 hours in the hospital, Carter-Williams, who could not walk or talk, left the hospital in a wheelchair.
The next day the symptoms worsened.
“I was diagnosed with a stroke and then put back into rehabilitation and for the next two years I was in medical care rehabilitation, speech occupational and cognitive and physical therapy,” Carter-Williams says.
RELATED: Life After Stroke: 5 Self-Care Tips
The importance of knowing your family history
After her stroke, Carter-Williams made another shocking discovery. Both her parents had cardiovascular disease (CVD), two first cousins had heart attacks, and another had a stroke at 36.
She believes that if she had this knowledge of her family history beforehand, doctors may have