[Editor's note: This article is second in the series, The Tales of a Stroke Patient. You can access the other articles here.]

I went to the closest hospital on Sunday before noon, and now it was Monday, 1:30 am. I was still in the ER. A room was finally available. The nurse assigned to my care told me the story about her sister who developed a stroke when she was an infant.

I don’t know why she told me that story. It was, after all, the middle of the night, and I was tired. But she was trying to prepare me, and I didn’t get it. A stroke wasn’t in my frame of reference. Not at all.

During the next two days, I was given more blood tests, but the tests were few and far between. So I just laid in the hospital bed watching television. The nurse would come in and ask me if I wanted anything, and I started to feel like I was on vacation. I continued not to get it.

At one point, a hematologist, assigned by the hospital, put me on Lovenox, an injectable blood thinner, for thirty days, at a twice-a-day dose totaling 160 mg, to break up the clots. Read more…