Derek Burnett
Derek Burnett is a Contributing Writer at Bottom Line Personal, where he writes frequently on health and wellness. He is also a contributing editor with Reader’s Digest magazine.
When you have a stroke, something goes wrong in a blood vessel feeding the brain. Either a blockage occurs or a vessel ruptures, forming a mass that pushes against the brain’s tissue. In either case (that is, whether the stroke is ischemic or hemorrhagic), part of the brain is deprived of oxygen and nutrients, and cells begin to die. But what does a stroke feel like for the patient? What are the actual physical sensations that accompany such a traumatic cerebrovascular event?
Although stroke has a set of classic symptoms that the public should be aware of, not everyone feels the same things when they have a stroke. Exactly what physical sensations a patient experiences can vary depending on the type of stroke, the part of the brain affected, the severity of the stroke, the patient’s sex, the patient’s pain tolerance, and other factors we don’t yet understand. Unfortunately, women, who experience more strokes than men, typically have symptoms that are more general and ambiguous than the classic symptoms experienced by men. As we mentioned earlier, women having a stroke are more likely than men to experience general fatigue, nausea, or weakness…symptoms that might be written off as stemming from some other problem.
Following are some of the descriptions survivors have used in recounting what their strokes felt like:
Headache: A hemorrhagic stroke is often first felt as a sudden, excruciating headache. A “thunderclap” headache is also the hallmark of a rare condition called reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome, in which a stroke occurs when the blood vessels supplying the brain suddenly and spontaneously constrict. One 45-year-old survivor of a stroke caused by a vertebral artery dissection described its onset as a feeling that her head had been struck by lightning. Others describe “the worst headache you can imagine,” “like a migraine,” and “like being hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat.”
Nausea. In recounting her experience of a hemorrhagic stroke to the American Heart Association, survivor Yael Shvetz describes having “an ongoing migraine for about a week on and off. I also was throwing up nonstop.” Patients having strokes often describe an unbearable nausea, with bouts of vomiting, that is relentless and is sometimes their primary symptom.
Vision changes. “My only symptom was I had double vision, lost all balance, and threw up multiple times,” one survivor posted to Reddit. “Outside of that, I was conscious and able to think and speak clearly.” Other survivors recalled a sudden unexplained loss of sight in one or both eyes, blurriness, impaired depth perception, and an inability to focus their eyes.
Dizziness and loss of motor control. “I felt dizzy,” a 28-year-old schoolteacher told the Today show, describing the stroke she had while teaching one day, “and I quickly lost all feeling in the left side of my body.”
Sometimes the dizziness and vertigo symptoms are insurmountable. As another survivor explained on Reddit, “I had extreme dizziness kick in. I managed to stumble out my front door to find a neighbor in their driveway, and they caught me before I hit the ground from the dizziness.”
Confusion, disorientation, and powerlessness. “Everything seemed slow-motion,” says one stroke survivor who shares his experience on YouTube. “Everything seemed kind of faraway…I had tunnel vision, couldn’t see what was going on around me, couldn’t see on either side.”
Stroke patients often describe a profound sense of disorientation, utter confusion about what’s happening to them and around them, and an inability to make decisions. It’s sometimes described as a loss of willpower, as if they’ve become passive observers of their own emergency. Stefan Reisch, who suffered an acute ischemic stroke while behind the wheel of his car, recalls that as it was happening, he found himself driving along the center divide of the highway…yet felt powerless to correct course. “It was like a dream,” he says, “like you’re having this dream that something is going on, but you can’t stop it.”
Another survivor puts it this way, “If not for my wife I would have died on the couch just trying to sleep off the strokes. It didn’t have the pain or symptom set that a broken bone or stomach pain has. It’s almost like you are slipping into darkness and you aren’t aware of [the] severity. It’s surreal.”
Emotional and personality changes: Many patients describe not being themselves during their stroke experience. Sometimes this manifests as a kind of drunken euphoria. One survivor commenting on Reddit recalls experiencing “Zero pain! Not even a headache.” On arrival at the ER, “I immediately joked to the woman at the desk that ‘I feel super drunk but I swear I’m not.’”
Another writing on the same forum says, “I felt like I was super-duper high on mushrooms, to be honest.”
Still another recalls, “I told my nurse, Bambi, that she had a stripper name. She refused to come back. I’m so sorry, Bambi! I would have never said that had I been in my right mind.”
Being “locked in”. In very severe strokes, patients are sometimes completely immobilized and unable to communicate. Such was the case for a former chef named Jim, who told his story of a severe brain-stem stroke to the American Stroke Association. “I thought I was calling out [my brother’s] name to come help me,” he says, “but the truth is that I couldn’t make a sound.”
Incontinence. Stroke patients sometimes lose control of their bladders or even their bowels. As one survivor commenting to a Reddit post recalls, “I felt a little tingling in my left leg and waste [coming ]out of both ends from about 8:00 p.m. that night until 4:00 a.m. that morning.”
Fatigue. “I remember just getting really tired and not caring much,” recalls one Redditor. “I had an overwhelming desire to crawl into bed and sleep.”
Numbness, burning, tingling. This happens frequently on only one side of the body, especially if the patient has had a lacunar stroke, which occurs when a blood clot blocks a small vessel deep inside the brain. “I woke up and I couldn’t feel anything on my right side, but I just thought I’d slept on it wrong,” stroke survivor Jayme Kelly explained to the American Heart Association. Others describe waking to what they thought was a foreign object lying beside them in bed, only to discover that it was their own limb.
Weakness. Often, stroke patients recall an overwhelming feeling that they have lost strength in their limbs. Professional musician Pat Hollenbeck recalls attempting to write a to-do list while in the throes of a stroke. “Writing felt like moving the pen through concrete,” he says.
Idiosyncratic sensations. Having a stroke can produce unusual symptoms that don’t fit a neat pattern. There’s almost no telling what someone might feel:
It may be likely that all of these sensations and symptoms are caused by something else, but the bottom line is clear: something is very wrong and you should call 911 or your doctor immediately, or have someone else do it for you.
