Personal Narrative: My Mother's Stroke

A Memorable Experience: My Mother’s Stroke

Eleanor Roosevelt once said “you gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.” Although people are constantly in scary situations, we never really expect to be in one ourselves. But what happens when we are? All of a sudden, nothing seems real anymore. It’s almost as if times stops and it’s just you and your fear looking directly at each other. What now? fgOn February 14th, 2016, my mother had a stroke, and I looked fear directly in the face.

On Valentine’s Day of 2016, my church decided to have a special program for couples about commitment and Christ. My parent’s friends’, Ashley and Kevin Lindler, asked my parents to go to the

program with them. Since they offered free childcare, my parents happily obliged. They dropped my sister, brother, and me off at daycare with Bradley, Orie, and Anna Louise Lindler. I remember having such a great time. We made Valentine’s Day cards, watched Shrek, and ate spaghetti. We had about 45 minutes of daycare left when my dad walked in. He talked to the supervisors for several minutes before walking over to me. He told us we needed to leave because Mom wasn’t feeling well. My mother got migraines fairly often, so this wasn’t too out of the ordinary. Once we got home, my dad told all of us to go in the playroom and watch a movie. We had just decided on something to watch when my dad opened the door. Very calmly, he told us that he had to take Mom to the ER, and that Mrs. Kristy (our neighbor) would come over to stay with us. My sister and I were confused, so my dad led us into his room. My mom told us to look at her face. One side of it was drooping. We heard a knock at the door, and Mrs. Kristy walked in. My mom told me that everything was going to be ok and not to worry. Then my parents left.
The next week was a blur.

The doctors in the hospital cleared my mom for visitors, so we went to see her every day after school. That Saturday, my dad decided to spend the night in the hospital with my mom. Mrs. Lindler spent the night at our house with us and took my siblings and me to church on Sunday morning. At this time, the doctors hadn’t confirmed that Mom had had a stroke, so they were running tests left and right. They finally figured out that she’d had a small stroke on the left side of her brain. They thought this was due to an extremely small hole in her heart. The doctors told her it would be best to have surgery to get this repaired. The surgery was very minimally invasive. They would go in with a catheter through a vein in her leg. The catheter would place a metal patch on the hole, and the heart tissue would grow around it. My mom scheduled her surgery for May 29th, 2016, and was discharged from the hospital.

Months passed and May finally arrived. We realized in April that Mom’s surgery was scheduled for the same day as my fifth grade graduation. On the 29th of May, I “bridged” over into 6th grade while my mom was getting prepped for surgery. My dad filmed the ceremony so Mom could watch it from her hospital bed. That night, we visited her and watched my graduation. About one week later, my mom came home from the hospital with a newly patched-up

heart.
Everyone goes through scary experiences in their life. It’s what makes up the people that we are. These things that happen to us shape our lives and open the door to courage, confidence, and strength. We can’t expect for life to be easy, we have to realize that life is hard and full of disappointment. The fact is, it’s inevitable that things aren’t going to go the way we planned. Life is like an old road that’s worn from travelling: There are some rough patches, and some smooth. But we have to get through it. We have to look fear in the face, no matter how scary it may be.