By Lester “Mac” McCurtis
My journey started by an overwhelming experience and just pushing my body until I fell over the edge. I move at a fast pace with lots of events on my schedule. Unfortunately, the overloading caught up with me. One day, I felt a blood vessel in my head swelling up as if it was about to burst. Something was not letting it flow and it kept swelling up until, I grabbed about four garlic oil capsules and took them. After about 15 to 20 minutes, the blood pushed thru and the flow continued. Wow, how scary is that. I’m blessed the vessel did not burst in my head.
This entire episode could have been prevented, if I had caught the signals. I had just come back from a trade show in Los Angeles. I told myself I would not go because it would be too stressful at the show. I decided to go anyway, but promised myself I would take it easy and not over load my activities. I must have logged about 17,000 steps each day on my pedometer that weekend. Also, the hotel where, I stayed (Extended Stay—Cypress) had black mold and bugs and that just added more stress to my weekend. Natural Products West Expo (NPW) is known as the largest expo in the world (3,000 vendors and over 100,000 attendees). The weekend was good meeting all the business contacts except for the hotel’s condition. However, I did manage to get a refund.
After driving back to San Diego, I picked up a bean and tofu bowl from Chipotle. The next day my stomach was all messed up like food poisoning. I could not eat anything for 4-5 days so, I only drank liquids and soup. After that episode, I stayed home Monday, I decided to go play Tennis on Tuesday. The decision was more out of boredom than being tired. So off I went to play on a stomach with little to no nutrients. After an hour of running all over the court, I sat down to recover although, I had already pushed my body too far. The next day I woke up with a serious cramp on the left side near my waistline, the same area as the bottom of the heart. They call it a “side stich”. Aw it was killing me for over a week. On Thursday, I was still in pain but went to shoot pool anyway (what could it hurt), I thought. Now, two days previous to playing tennis; I was getting numbness, and tingling in my left finger tips. I normally have neuropathy in my neck, right arm and hand and thought this was my neck starting to give me problems. While shooting pool it hit me. I lost my equilibrium, seemed like the Twilight zone. So, I grabbed the top of a chair so I wouldn’t fall. Then my vision was cloudy, I could only see half of my friend’s face, the other half just disappeared. I was telling her as it happened. My nose started to run and this was all too strange.
When I got home, that’s when the blood vessel started to swell in my head and I stopped it by taking the garlic oil pills. I have never experienced anything like this before and do not ever want to experience it again.
If I had looked on the computer, I would have learned that tingling and numbness are symptom of a stroke. I should not have pushed my body to play tennis, because that just made me more vulnerable for a stressful event.
It’s not hard to miss clues when your body is telling you that something is wrong. We need to pay better attention to our bodies, especially when the symptoms it is experiencing could be life threatening.
Another piece to my puzzle, I have Atrial Fibrillation (an arrythmia, my heart skips beats). Also, I had on- going dental surgery for the past 3 to 4 months. I feel the anesthesia used by the dentist to numb my mouth had highly toxic chemicals and dangerous metals in it. All dental local anesthetics have a neurotoxic potential (Evidence of Neurotoxicity-NIH.gov). Some may have dangerous heavy metals such as: lead, mercury or cadmium). Google-Dr Hal Huggins to read more on dental toxicity.
Your physical exams provide a lot of information, that could help you identify possible body weaknesses. Always check with your medical professional when unfamiliar symptoms appear that leave you in awe. This is just an experience I wanted to share so no one would have to go through the same horrific event of having a Stroke.
Symptoms: Sudden painless weakness on one side of your body, numbness or tingling in the tips of your fingers, numbness or a dead feeling on one side of your body, loss of vision in one or both eyes, loss of one‐half of your vision (either left or right eye), loss of the ability to understand what people are saying, loss of the ability to express yourself verbally or in writing.
References:
- NIH–Evidence of Neurotoxicity in Dental Local Anesthetics: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7193061/
- NIH-Atrial Fibrillation and Stroke Symptoms: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9238509/
Thanks for that article. Very informative…