Donna Garlough lifted her 18-month-old son, Jonah, from his crib and kissed his belly. He babbled his morning greeting. But Donna couldn’t babble back.
Things were off that morning in February 2015. Donna had blamed the splitting headache she woke up with on the white wine she’d sipped the night before. As she tried to cut fruit for Jonah and his 4-year-old sister, Sarah, the strawberries kept slipping out of her hand. Maybe she’d slept funny, she thought.
Then, she couldn’t talk. “It was an extremely alien experience,” said Donna, a style director, home design blogger and author who’s now 37. “When I opened my mouth, nothing came out. It was like I was pushing the TV remote and nothing was coming on.”
Donna thought of her neighbor, Jessica Diaz, who’d recently had a stroke. A voice inside her head telling her to listen to her body got louder, but it didn’t put a stop to her busy morning routine.
In the shower, she lost feeling in her left hand. It felt like it was made of thick, dense rubber, she recalled.
“That’s what forced me to say, ‘This is real, this is happening.’”
Still, Donna gave herself another test. Wrapped in her bath towel, she smiled in the mirror. But only the right side of her mouth moved.
She thought, “But I’m only 35.”
Her thoughts went back to Jessica. Donna knew about stroke in theory — lists and pictures of warning signs — but Jessica made it real. If Jessica, a “wildly fit” Pilates teacher and barre instructor, could have a stroke, Donna realized she could too.
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