Survivor Stories
Royalle, 38, Tucson, Arizona
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August 21st, 2024, started like any regular day. I had a hair appointment that took about five hours, and I left feeling great. Afterward, I decided to do some gig work. My 10-year-old daughter wanted to come with me for a bit, so we blasted music, rolled down the windows, and sang at the top of our lungs.
When I got to my last order, I had to walk up three flights of stairs. At the top, something felt off—my heart was pounding out of my chest, and I couldn't catch my breath. I tried to breathe deeply while waiting for the customer to open the door. After handing over the order, I stood at the top of the stairs for a minute, trying to calm down. My heart rate was 180 bpm.
My daughter, waiting at the bottom, could tell something wasn’t right. She kept asking if I was okay. I told her, “I’m okay—my heart’s just beating really fast.” I finally made my way down the stairs and leaned on the car for a while, still trying to bring my heart rate down. By then, it had dropped to around 130 bpm. Once I got in the car and we started heading home, I felt fine again—like nothing had happened. I didn’t think much of it, since I'd dealt with elevated heart rate and shortness of breath on stairs ever since I had COVID four years ago. But this was the most intense I had ever felt my heart pounding.
Later, I went home, made dinner for my family, and relaxed on the sofa. Around 9:00 p.m., I told the kids it was time to get ready for bed. I felt oddly agitated for no clear reason, so I decided to put my hair up in a ponytail and clean the kitchen while they got ready.
That’s when everything changed.
As I tried to put my hair in a ponytail, I couldn’t get the hair tie around my hair. I instantly felt strange, off, and slightly panicked, but not overwhelmingly so.
I ran into the bedroom and told my husband I couldn’t put my ponytail in. He had already gone to sleep for work in the morning, but when he heard me, he took off his CPAP mask and jumped out of bed. He said I wasn’t forming words properly. At that point, I was panicking because I knew something was wrong.
I told him I needed to use the restroom, but I couldn’t pull my pants down. He had to help me. When I stood back up, I suddenly lost all function on my left side and collapsed onto the tile floor, landing on my left leg.
My husband called 911 as I lay there, crying out in pain and confusion. I knew something was terribly wrong. The pain in my leg was unbearable, yet the entire left side of my body was numb—it was the strangest sensation I’d ever felt. I couldn’t lift myself off the floor. My husband was still on the phone with 911 as I pleaded for someone to help me. At some point, he put the phone down and managed to lift me onto the bed while we waited for paramedics.
The fire department arrived first. They told me to calm down, that I was just having anxiety and hyperventilating. I begged them to take me to the hospital, telling them I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know I was having a stroke, but I felt like I was going to die. My kids were across the hall as I begged for my life. My husband stood in the hallway, and I just wanted to get to him—to get him to take me to the hospital since no one else would.
I tried to stand up, but I fell again, and the firefighters didn’t catch me, further injuring my leg. I was unable to walk. Still sitting on the floor, I kept pleading, but they continued to insist it was just anxiety. After nine minutes, they finally contacted paramedics.
When the paramedics arrived, they were told I wanted to go to the hospital and that the call would be reported as anxiety. At the hospital, I sat in the emergency bay while they assumed I was having a panic attack. Eventually, they did a CT scan and MRI. That’s when they discovered I had an ischemic stroke in the parietal lobe, and another, previous stroke in the cerebellum.
They also did an MRI on my leg and found I had torn my ACL and PCL, fractured my tibia, dislocated my kneecap, and torn the ligament connecting my kneecap.
After three days in that hospital without clear answers, my husband took me to another local hospital. That’s where I was finally diagnosed with antiphospholipid syndrome. They also found a small hole in my heart, which led them to believe that when I walked up those stairs and my heart pounded so vigorously, a clot in my heart escaped through the hole into my brain.
I was so thankful to finally have an explanation.
Stroke recovery is a daily battle, physically, mentally, emotionally, but I’ve learned to hold tight to what matters most: my faith, my family, and the will to keep pushing forward.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: never stop advocating for yourself. Even when others don't listen. Even when they think it’s “just anxiety.” You know your body. Speak up. Fight. Your life, and your children’s world, may depend on it.