4th JULY 2001
My name is Gavin Traeger I live in San Francisco, Ca. I am a wood worker I work for a company doing high end picture framing for artists, galleries, and collectors. I'm single but share a flat (this city is so expensive) with friends and my orange and white fat cat. i'm thirty five years old. My interests include travel and film.I was in Bhutan and Thailand last year before my stroke.
I love India and would like to go there again, ( I was there in 1994) I also have been to Germany and Holland.
Well on to the medical, I had a stroke 1/24/01 it was caused by a dissection of the interior carotid artery. It happened after having a large headache/ neckache for several days, this was accompanied by a visual disturbance in my right eye( light seemed to be perceived differently, with a bit of a "halo effect")
I thought I was just having a stress headache of some variety as I had worked about 14 days straight and the last week they were 10-12 hour days on a T.V. show filming in san francisco.
The next day I went into my regular job and I was having problems with balance and grip ( spilled coffee, then couldn't get up after getting down to clean it up)
My co-worker and dear friend Laura came in and asked me why I was on the floor. I said " I'm fine" she asked me why I was speaking strangley. I said " I'm not ". Laura informed me that we were going to the hospital. I said no. She said "yes" She won.
To the hospital and tests: cat scan shows nothing, although cat scan technician asks me "Is this your first stroke" MRI/ MRA shows stroke and occlusion of carotid artery Angiogram shows carotid to be blocked, but they say there is good collateral flow from other sources infusing my Brain.
I spend two weeks in hospital on Heparin then switching to Warfarin, and off to inpatient rehab at a facility 30 miles away,
I'm only there for one week as I'm functioning pretty well that was in mid-feb. I did some out-patient rehab then went into work very limited hours for my own occupational therapy.
I'm now working about 30 hours a week which is okay I tried doing a bit too much at first and got very fatigued.
As things stand now I'm still on Warfarin and on thursday I'm getting a follow-up MRA to see how my artery looks. Physically I do pretty well day-to-day , get more tired easier, generally less strong, left side especially weak and sensitive to temperature.
The hardest part is feeling like a different person, I feel like I've lost a bit of my quick wittedness. I feel like I can' t speak as well either (does that get better?) Things were going really well for me before this happened now I 'm set back, goals that seemed near now seem so far.
My self esteem has taken a hit as well, I feel a bit like damaged goods.
Thanks for reading all this,
Gavin Traeger
