Survivor highlights unpredictability of strokes

BUFFALO, N.Y. — In 2013, Kelly Naab was in the car with her two boys waiting for dinner, when suddenly something was wrong.

“I started losing all feeling in my face,” Naab said. “And as a nurse practitioner, I knew that wasn’t a good sign. So I looked in the mirror and I kind of knew what was going on. I tried to call for help , but I couldn’t get the words out at first when I was in the drive-thru line.

Naab’s face began to droop and she lost all feeling in her right side. But she says her symptoms disappeared as quickly as they appeared. Still, knowing something was wrong, she decided to go to the doctor. She was shocked to learn that she had had a transient ischemic attack, also called a TIA. TIA occurs when a clot temporarily blocks blood flow to the brain and is often a warning sign of a larger stroke.

“Why would this happen to me? I had no risk factors that I knew of in the coming days,” she said. “After that, I did further tests and they discovered that I had a hole in my heart which was probably the cause of the stroke, something that I was born with and that I had lived for 35 years and I didn’t know I had it.

Her doctors prescribed blood thinners and Kelly was able to return to her active, healthy lifestyle. His goal now was to reduce risk factors.

“I then ran three half marathons, improving my time each year in 2018,” Naab said. “I felt like I was in the best shape of my life and that summer I suffered a head injury.”

Over the next month, his concussion symptoms only got worse. She underwent further tests and discovered she had had an ischemic stroke.

“The doctors felt it was important to continue to fill the hole in my heart,” she said. “So in October 2018, I underwent a procedure at the Gates Vascular Institute in Buffalo to close the hole in my heart to prevent another stroke.”

After the operation, she returned to normal life. Today, Naab seeks to raise awareness that strokes can happen at any time and to anyone. His experiences made him realize how precious life is and how important it is to live life to the fullest.

“You don’t realize what it really means until you’re faced with something like this,” she said. “But not a day goes by that I don’t think about what happened to me and how lucky I am to come out the other side, healthy and strong.”

Naab also stresses the importance of seeking help from medical professionals when something is wrong.