“Knowing you are not alone is the most important,” shares Darrell Yazza. “There are other people who have been through it and they’re doing well.” Once a month, Darrell brings the perspective only a stroke survivor would understand to stroke patients at Lovelace Rehabilitation Hospital. “I remember someone came in when I was here.” A member of the Albuquerque Stroke Club visited with Darrell after he had suffered a stroke at the age of 40. He was in the middle of intense therapy, trying to regain what his stroke had so abruptly taken away from him literally overnight. That visit from someone who was on the other side of therapy and living life again, never left Darrell even when darker days set in.
March 22, 2005, Darrell went to bed for the last time without stroke being a part of his everyday life. “I was sleeping when it happened,” he says. “When I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to use the restroom, the right side of my body didn’t work. I thought I had slept the wrong way.” Groggy, Darrell tried to sit up in bed, but realized that was more difficult than usual. “That’s when I noticed my right arm wasn’t working at all. My leg was the same way.” At this point, Darrell thought he was still dreaming. He tried to stand, without noticing that he was only balancing on one leg. He took a step. “I fell right onto the floor and that’s when I thought there was something really wrong with me.”
Lying on the floor, Darrell managed to crawl to his bathroom. There was no one in the house to hear that he had fallen or was struggling to move across the room. Fortunately, he had left his cell phone on a dresser low enough to reach from the floor. Darrell called 911 and stayed on the phone with the operator as he slowly made his way to his front door to unlock it for paramedics. “I was really trying not to panic on the phone,” he recalls. “You don’t know what’s going on with your body.”
Darrell had suffered a major stroke. In his case, high blood pressure was the culprit, which is one of the leading risk factors for stroke. Nearly 800,000 Americans have a stroke each year. A stroke occurs every 40 minutes. It is the leading cause of long-term disability and the fifth-leading cause of death. As Darrell says, “stroke attacks you – who you are.”
After 10 days in the hospital, Darrell was transferred to the Lovelace Rehabilitation Hospital for inpatient therapy. He was not able to walk and had lost control of his right arm. “I enjoyed Lovelace Rehab,” he says. “I worked at getting better each day. My memory was very short-term. I would wake up in the morning and discover that I had had a stroke and then decide that I needed to work at getting better all day.”
For six weeks, Darrell worked with a team of occupational therapists, speech therapists and physical therapists. Despite the constant work to relearn everything he knew how to do prior to that March night, he says the days were easier than the nights. “Then I would start to get depressed, thinking life is over,” he shares. “I would fall asleep and forget all of that.”
Darrell says as his long-term memory improved those feelings of depression and defeat lingered longer each day until they never left. “Depression set in about two years after my stroke,” he says. “That’s when I remembered the person who came visit me at Lovelace Rehab and recalled the Albuquerque Stroke Club.”
A support group for stroke survivors and their loved ones, the Albuquerque Stroke Club offered Darrell a safe environment where he could share his own feelings of depression and listen to others, talking about the stages of grief. The group learns from each other and each month, they are there for stroke survivors facing the beginning of their journey back to living after a stroke. “I try to be hopeful for them,” he says. “After you’ve gone through this event you are totally unprepared for, I want them to know there is still life, but yes, it has drastically changed.”
Today, Darrell keeps his blood pressure under control and manages stress better than he did leading up to his stroke. He advises everyone, regardless of their age, to know and manage the risk factors for stroke. “Do everything you can do to reduce your risk to avoid having a stroke,” he adds.
Join us this National Stroke Month and help us spread the word to help prevent more strokes. As many as 80 percent of strokes can be prevented. Learn more about risk factors for stroke and recognizing the signs of a stroke at our free seminar May 26 at Lovelace Medical Center from 2 to 3:00 p.m. Call 898-3030 to register. Click here for more details.
Lovelace Medical Center has received the DNV Gold Seal of Approval as a certified Primary Stroke Center and the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Gold Plus Achievement Award with Target: StrokeSM Honor Roll Elite Plus. Lovelace Rehabilitation Hospital is the only hospital in New Mexico accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) in six programs.