Josh Hader, 28, tore a spinal artery and suffered a stroke after cracking his neck.
The end of the story could have been dramatic: Josh Hader, 28, suffered a stroke last March after cracking his neck. Shortly after his gesture, he realizes that the left side of his body is numb. As a former police officer, the young man knows the signs of a stroke. His face is not droopy. He therefore concludes that he simply hurt a nerve. “Walking towards the kitchen, (…) I literally couldn’t walk straight. I almost only walked straight to the left”, he explains to the Washington Post.
His stepfather rushes him to the hospital. His condition is deteriorating rapidly, he can no longer walk at all. The diagnosis is then made by doctors: it is a cerebrovascular accident, caused by the tearing of a vertebral artery where a blood clot had formed. “He could have died,” confirms Vance McCollom, a physician at Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma City. “People just need to know that sudden neck pain can potentially be the starting point of a stroke,” says stroke neurologist Kazuma Nakagawa.
Only 12 minutes to administer the treatment
The patient must receive a treatment, called tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, which dissolves blood clots. “I remember sitting down and hearing the doctor say he has twelve minutes left to give me tPA,” says Josh Hader. “I still didn’t want to believe it. But everything was falling apart, like ‘no, this is actually happening to you'”. His wife, Rebecca, also tells the daily that she had trouble believing that her husband was really having a stroke.
Time to recover
Josh Hader spent a few days in an intensive care unit, before being transferred to a rehabilitation center. Within a few weeks, the patient was able to walk again. “Over the past two weeks, I have been able to help a lot more around the house, doing regular chores or helping take care of our 1 and 5 year olds,” says Josh Hader. “Before that, I was pretty useless.” Although he has not lost any cognitive abilities, he still suffers from balance issues, has difficulty controlling his left arm, and lacks sensation in his right arm and leg.
The worst has been avoided
Doctor Kazuma Nakagawa believes that it could have been much worse, because the type of stroke suffered by Josh Hader is particularly deadly. The vertebral arteries in the neck join in the brain, to become the basilar artery. It plays an essential role in supplying blood to the brainstem. “The brainstem is the heart and soul of the brain,” says Dr. Nakagawa. “Without it, our brain just doesn’t work.”
When a vertebral artery tear affects the basilar artery, a person can fall into a coma or end up in a permanent vegetative state. In 2016, model Katie May died at the age of 34 after suffering this type of stroke.
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