The Morning Everything Changed
- anartistslament
- Mar 5
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 2
Stroke Series — Part 1
Tuesday, February 12, 2026, started like any other day.
I woke up, went to the bathroom, and climbed back into bed. Nothing felt unusual — until suddenly it did. I had this overwhelming sense that something wasn’t right. It was the kind of feeling you get when you know something is wrong but you don’t yet know what. Like maybe one of your kids is hurt. Or there’s a stranger in the house. A quiet alarm going off somewhere deep inside you.
Then the headache hit.
I tried to sit up in bed — and fell over to the right.
I tried again.
Same thing.
My right arm wouldn’t cooperate. It was there, but it wasn’t helping. My husband asked me what was wrong as he tried to help me sit up. Very gently, very calmly, he said, “Use your words.”
But I couldn’t.
I tried. I knew what I wanted to say, but nothing was coming out. My tongue felt like it was two or three sizes too big for my mouth, like it was coated in cotton. When sounds finally came out, they didn’t make sense. My husband couldn’t understand a word I was saying.
That’s when the frustration hit.
My body wasn’t working. My voice wasn’t working. And I didn’t understand why.
I burst into tears.
For a brief moment, not so much fear, but annoyed WTF, crept in — not because I knew what was happening, but because I didn’t. I wondered if maybe it was some extreme case of vertigo, except I wasn’t nauseated. Nothing made sense.
Very calmly, my husband said he thought I might be having a stroke.
I remember thinking, Okay. What do we do now?
Almost as soon as he said it, my symptoms began to ease. I could sit on my own again. My speech was still slurred, but understandable. The panic faded and a strange calm took its place — the kind that shows up when your brain switches into problem-solving mode.
We needed to get to the hospital.
I told him I needed to get dressed first — and to take off my wedding rings, because if they were going to scan me, I didn’t want to worry about them. He helped me dress, and I was able to walk down the stairs by myself, slowly but steadily.
By the time the ambulance arrived, I was sitting upright and speaking more clearly, with only a slight slur.
In the ambulance, I focused on not getting motion sickness and kept telling myself one very specific thought:
I’m not going out like this.
I remember trying to look out the back window as we drove. The houses scattered along the hillsides. The white village of Salobreña as we passed by. The sky was impossibly clear and blue.
It felt strange that the world could look so normal — so beautiful — while something inside my brain had just gone wrong.
When we arrived at the hospital, I felt almost normal again. I was even getting hungry — we hadn’t had breakfast yet. None of it felt real. I was awake, responsive, walking, talking. Part of me wondered if maybe we had overreacted.
That illusion disappeared when the doctor came back with the scan results.
“There is blood on your brain.”
I remember thinking, Oh. Okay. What do we do now?
I didn’t want brain surgery. If the bleeding increased, I would have to be transferred to a larger hospital, and they would need to drain it. That possibility hovered in the background, but oddly, I don’t remember feeling overwhelming fear. My husband was there, steady and calm, and that mattered more than anything.
He stayed with me through the first tests and until visiting hours ended that night.
He has always been my safety net.
Looking back now, the strangest part of that morning is how quickly life shifted — from ordinary routine to medical emergency — and how, even now, part of my brain still wonders if it really happened at all.
Because aside from fatigue… I mostly feel like myself.
At least for now.
Next: Inside the Hospital — tests, waiting, and the moment I picked up my iPad to see if I could still draw.
Comments