A teen was having a stroke. Her friends noticed thanks to Snapchat photos.
When Lexi Eddy sent Snapchats to her friends on March 10, they noticed something was off.
The 18-year-old’s face was drooping on one side, and she couldn’t move her left side. Eddy had just fallen out of a chair and didn’t understand what was going on.
“What's wrong with your face?” her friends asked. “It looks like you're having a stroke. Are you good?”
Eddy, who lives in Atwater, Ohio, about 26 miles southeast of Akron, was eventually rushed to the hospital. There, she learned she had a stroke.
She captured that stroke in her Snapchat photos that day, she said. While she no longer has the photos, she recalls something feeling odd.
“You could definitely see my mind wasn't there,” Eddy told Paste BN on May 15, during National Stroke Awareness Month.
The teenager had no movement on the left side of her face, while the right side was fine, and in one video her sister recorded at the hospital, she had visible issues with her left hand.
“You can just see my hand and how I had no control of it, and it was just bent,” she said. “It was weak, and I couldn't move it, but it would automatically just move on its own.”
Teen had a normal day before a stroke left her unable to move her left side
Eddy had previously had a concussion months earlier, but the day of her medical emergency, things were pretty standard. She had gone to school and then work. She was pulling a cap off a pen when something changed.
“I got this whole whiff of lightheadedness,” she said, adding that it eventually turned into a “pounding headache” and everything felt “a little fuzzy.”
Eddy fell out of her chair at work multiple times that day. She tried calling her mom but the call wouldn’t go through, she told Paste BN. She then managed to text her mother “SOS.”
The last time she fell, coworkers told her to stay put on the floor while someone called for help. She was rushed to a hospital, where she waited, wondering what was happening. She got an MRI, then was taken back to her room, where emergency responders were waiting.
There, employees told her she had a stroke, then took her to a second hospital, Akron General, part of the Cleveland Clinic.
She had previously been able to see her father, but at Akron General, she found herself alone in a room, she said. A team of doctors then rushed in, and tears welled up in her eyes.
“It's just me, alone in this room with doctors standing around me, asking me questions,” she recalled. “I was like ‘Wow. This is a lot more serious than I really initially thought it was.’”
Doctors treated teen with ‘blood clot buster’
Dr. Yousef Mohammad, a neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic where Eddy was treated, said she underwent multiple evaluations on March 10, including a CAT scan.
The tests showed a vascular occlusion, or a blood vessel blockage caused by a clot or pressure.
Eddy’s blockage was in a vessel on the brain called the middle cerebral artery, which carries fresh blood to the brain. She immediately received an intravenous tenecteplase, also called an IV TNK.
“This is a blood clot buster,” her doctor told Paste BN. “It breaks down the blood clot and restores blood flow to the brain.”
Eddy was soon able to squeeze one employee’s hand. She felt better within 24 hours of having the stroke, although she sometimes struggles to clasp her bra and put on a necklace.
Doctors ran tests to rule out causes of teen’s stroke
The next step doctors took was to do a “stroke workup,” to determine the cause and hopefully prevent another stroke, Dr. Mohammad said.
In Eddy’s case, they found a hole in the upper chamber of her heart, which 20% to 25% of the general population has. It’s not abnormal, her doctor said.
“There was an 88% chance that the hole was causing the stroke,” Mohammad said. “We have to close it.”
That procedure is non-invasive and will take place in June. Eddy said she’ll have to lie completely flat for a few hours after the procedure. After that, she’ll take it easy for a week and refrain from lifting anything weighing more than five pounds or so. She’ll take medicine for at least a year.
Finding a friend during ‘scary’ time
According to Eddy’s mother, the teen is the first person on either side of the family to have a stroke.
For Eddy, her stroke was “scary,” and everything unfolded quickly, but she found solace in someone she met at the hospital – a nurse named DeFloria.
“She called me princess, so I called her queen,” Eddy said. “She made my visit there a lot easier because it was scary and it was hard, and I'm 18 years old around all of these older people who I see are not recovering.”
The pair were like “best friends” during her hospital stay, and stayed in touch even after Eddy was moved to a new floor. They spoke the day she was discharged from the hospital.
“She didn't know I was leaving,” Eddy said, adding that the nurse just stopped by 10 minutes before the teen was set to leave. The nurse was going through something with her own daughter, and Eddy and her mother reminded her of their relationship.
“And she helped me,” Eddy said. “She was really a godsend and a really amazing woman.”
Saleen Martin is a reporter on Paste BN's NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Email her at sdmartin@usatoday.com.