NEWS & IDEAS

What it’s like to have a stroke at 35

POSTED ON 12 22 2011 BY Margaret Webb
UNDER Survivor Stories

Jordan Bruce had everything going for him. At 35, he was living the young urban professional’s dream: a career in IT making good money, adventure vacations scuba diving and skydiving, a city condo, a flashy car. Sure, there was stress – he was working long days as the senior lead on a major project. He smoked and didn’t make time to work out, though he wasn’t overweight.

Bruce was working late one night after a performance review that didn’t go as well as he'd wanted when an intense headache came on, then dizziness. He fell out of his chair, tried to get up several times and smashed his head against his desk. Good thing – the noise alerted another coworker, who called 9-1-1. Although two-thirds of strokes occur in people over the age of 70, it is not rare for young adults to have a stroke – and in fact, the paramedics noticed signs of one: Bruce’s face looked like it had melted, and his left side, he says, felt like a bag of jelly beans. The paramedics called the hospital to put a stroke team on standby, and the team was able to treat Bruce within the first three critical hours after onset with the clot-busting drug tPA, which breaks up the clot and restores blood flow and oxygen to the brain.

Still, when Bruce woke up, he was paralyzed. “I started crying,” he recalls. “I didn’t believe it. I refused to believe it.”

There had been warning signs to be sure. Although within normal weight ranges, Bruce smoked and internalized his work stress. He had suffered two mild heart attacks and already experienced a mild stroke.

While Bruce tried to make healthier lifestyle choices, he wasn't able to slow down his pace at work

Now he was thrust into an entirely new peer group - that of stroke survivor. “I was disabled. My new peer group was 70 and 80 year olds,” he says.

He knew he had a decision to make. “Was it going to be woe is me, or who is me? So my life has changed," he says. "Depending on what we do with that, it can be a negative or positive. I got to know myself more through this. I discovered that stroke survivors have great strength and determination. You have to, or progress stops. It’s an honour to be part of this group.”

Bruce became known as the “cheerleader” at the Toronto Rehabilitation Centre. “I was in a wheelchair and couldn’t do anything, but I’d be cheering on these older folks. To see them make progress gave me hope that I would too.”

But as a younger survivor, he did want to get his full mobility back, and he wanted to contribute to improving treatment for other stroke survivors. “At my age, we question, we have ideas. I find things broken, I want to try and make them better.”

Nine months after his stroke, he is living at home, using a cane to walk long distances and struggling with limited use of his left arm and some cognitive impairment. But he has made helping other survivors a critical part of his own rehabilitation.

Bruce is sharpening his programming skills by developing a software program called Stroke E-Passport, which will enable stroke survivors to carry all their vital medical information on a USB key. The hugely portable application will enable survivors to share select medical information with their caregivers, both medical and rehabilitation teams. The application will promote communication – there will be a messaging centre where caregivers can leave messages for each other – and help survivors control and monitor their risk factors. Bruce hopes to pilot the program in November 2011 and make it available to stroke victims across Canada through the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the March of Dimes and the Toronto West Stroke Network.

Bruce also wants to see more investment — by government, by health insurance plans and through fundraising — put into rehabilitation. His ended after just 12 weeks. “I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I’m 35 and you’re telling me this is all I get? Me being handicapped is a bigger stressor on the system than investing in rehabilitation.”

He also wants to start a stroke support group for younger survivors like himself. “The transition home from rehab was really hard," he says. "Your peers [in rehabilitation] understand what you’re going through, but sometimes your friends and family don’t. You’re experiencing all these new emotions — frustration, anger, happiness. You can go from zero to 100 like that." The financial stress takes its toll too, he adds. "I get 55 percent of my salary on long-term disability, but your rent and bills aren’t cut by 50 percent, unfortunately. And at first you’re scared to leave your apartment. You’re afraid you’ll fall. You’re embarrassed by what people will think. But I don’t want people to be walking in the shadows because they’re embarrassed.”

Recently, the Heart and Stroke Foundation asked Bruce to be a spokesperson. The role thrills him. “People tell me I’m an inspiration," he says. "That keeps me going. If I can make a difference, that drives me harder. Having a stroke changed my life, not all of it for the worse. It has given me a cause – to help other stroke survivors.”

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