Podcast: Be Inspired by Marcia's Life After a Stroke Story

Transcription of Podcast

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Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. Today we have a really interesting guest called Marcia.

Marcia is going to be talking about her experience of having a stroke. Now spoilers, her stroke was not due to lifestyle factors. It was just one of those random events that happened.

Be Inspired By Marcia’s Recovery From Stroke Journey

Now you might be thinking, Dr. Orlena, why is this relevant to your podcast? Well, what I want you to take from this is her story of recovery and how she motivated herself to make changes and how if you can make changes when emergency happens, something huge happened to her life. and she was motivated to get back on track, to pull herself from that place and really get her life back.

Don’t Wait for a Disaster, Make Healthy Changes Now

Now, you do not need to wait for a disaster to happen before you motivate yourself to make big changes or even small changes you can make those changes. Right now. Now the thing about motivation is you might be thinking, Well, my life is kind of okay at the moment. Well, it may be kind of okay at the moment, but it may be much, much better.

So if you are also thinking, Yeah, I know. I don't look after myself properly. I know that I could do better then feel inspired by this story.

Healthy Happy Holidays Workshop

And number two, come to tomorrow's workshop. So the, the workshop is healthy happy holidays, and we're gonna be looking at that identity piece that thought that you have.

And if you're listening to this after. The day has gone, then there will be a replay. So if you just sign up, you will be sent to the replay of that workshop. But if you can make it live, I really urge you to make it live, because that piece, that identity piece, that how you think of yourself really is the key to unlocking lots of amazing changes.

Welcome to Marcia

So, welcome, welcome, Marcia. Hello, Hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena Kerek. I'm super excited today because we are talking to Marcia Moran.

Now I am super excited to talk to Marcia because, well, I don't know her story, but we're gonna find out her story and we're gonna be inspired by her story,

So Marcia, do you want to stop by telling us a little bit about yourself and then we can dive into your story? Yes. So I am married. My husband works for the. Well, we're in the US and my husband works for the government. And we've been here about 28 years, which is a really long time. . Fabulous.

The Day Marcia Had a Stroke

Fabulous. And so I want you to tell your story. Where do you wanna start? And just dive in basically. Okay. So I'm going to start with it was early Sunday. In 2014 when I woke up and I went, I feel weird. So I texted my friend Rochelle because we were supposed to get together for coffee and I clearly wasn't going to go for coffee.

And when I read it, I couldn't actually understand what I had written. I thought, Well, that is so strange. So I put my phone down, I rolled over, and I got the worst headache Imagin. And despite that, I fell asleep. The next time I woke up, I was paralyzed on my right hand side. So I knew that I needed to get up and find help, or I just needed to give up.

So I rolled out of bed and I dragged myself across the carpet. With my left hand until I reached the door, which was closed, and I struggled to open the door, and I don't know how many times I tried to open it, but finally it snuck open. I took a, I'm going to say a short break, but I don't really know, and I finally got enough gumption to crawl down the.

And halfway down the hall, I ran outta gas and I thought, That's okay. My husband's gonna come up for something to drink. Crash. We don't know what's went crash. But my husband came upstairs and he said, Marsha, how are you? Can you talk to me? That's when I realized I couldn't speak. Mick said, I'm gonna call nine one.

and he did. He walked around the house to see if he could find anything that made any sense to him, which he didn't. Came back and waited for the paramedics. And when the paramedics arrived, which was about 10 minutes, the first one that came through the door said, When did the stroke happened? So that is the first time my husband and I heard the word stroke and thought about it, which.

Pretty frightening. And I don't know what he said. I actually lost consciousness about that time. And the next time I woke up, I was in the hospital with the hospital gown on a needle in my arm. And my husband was standing by my sides. So that's my story. . That's amazing. And how old were you at the time?

That's amazing.

Marcia Starts Her Recovery

And. I want to hear more about your subsequent story because at that time I'm sure it was very scary and I'm sure everyone was thinking, Oh my goodness, what's going to happen? So there's another amazing second part to your story of recovery. But when you, when they told you about the stroke, did they say, Hey, you know, this is just one of those random things that happened, or had it been because of lifestyle choices to begin with?

So I was really healthy. I ran three to four times a week. I had normal cholesterol. I was a normal weight so I had a carotid artery dissection, which is right here. One to 2% of people who have a stroke have that, and it is one of those unexplainable things that I couldn't have done anything about.

And also very lucky that you didn't. Yes, . So if it had been a weekday, I probably would have. Wow. Amazing. And so you were left. Let's go back to that day. You're in hospital, you're paralyzed. What are they saying to you? Are they saying, Hey, this is all gonna be great? Were they saying, Yeah, it's not looking so good?

So, So to be honest, I really don't remember what they were saying to me that day. So people would come into my room, they would talk to me, I would understand what they. And as soon as they left the room, I forgot everything. . Yeah, I, So I had really bad short term memory. What I will say is that a physical therapist came in that night and hooked a belt, which is about three inches wide, around my waist.

And we went for a walk around the nurse's station . And without her help, I couldn't have made it. She was the one that was helping me. Yeah. I could move my left, or I'm sorry, my right leg a little bit at that time. So at clump, clump, clump, . And yeah, when we got back to the bed, I was excited because I could go back to sleep again.

Sure. And could you talk at all or not? Not really. So when I was in the hospital, I could talk a little. Sometimes. So the nurses came up to me and asked me to count to 10, and I had studied Norwegian, so I thought, this is really great. I'll just, I'll speak a Norwegian to 'em, . So I did, and my husband thought that was really great because at that time he said she will come.

Because she's clearly all there. Which I wasn't , right? And the nurses said, that's not okay for you to talk in a foreign language. You have to tuck in your own language because you have to bring it all together again. So, I don't know I thought it was cute . Okay. And so, How did you make that road to recovery?

So this is what, eight years ago now? And I'm talking to you, you can talk perfectly normally now, and I've just seen you walk around. So you've shown that the brain is plastic and does amazing things, but I'm sure it's very easy to talk about it now and go, Oh, but I'm sure that journey was not as easy as 1, 2, 3.

So what, what happened on that journey of recovery? They had me do physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. And I did that for two weeks in the hospital. And then I went home, actually the rehab hospital that I went home, I did two six weeks of it at home healthcare at two weeks off, and I did eight weeks of it at the rehab hospital.

Marcia Got Support to Help Her Recovery

And then I was. And I wasn't really done. I could barely walk. I could walk without a cane, so I could walk normally, which meant that I didn't require anything to help me other than my, my husband. And he went with a lot of walks with me around the hos around the neighborhood. So I decided to hire a physical therapist and she worked with me for a.

Wow. And when she was done, when you looked at me, you couldn't see that I had had a stroke. Now I still had pain. My right side isn't really synced with my left side, so a physical therapist or a doctor could tell. But I think I'm pretty lucky. Right and determined as well. And when you were going through that journey, were there ever any moments when you just thought, I can't do this, I can't carry on?

Marcia Worked on Her Motivation to Recovery

Or was it you were always motivated and So I had a few times where I was disheartened. But after a day, I said, Okay, it's time to stack it, step it up, and really try again. And though I was disheartened, I always did my exercises every single day. And that's important because neuroplasticity, which means that you have plastic in your brain and it will relearn things.

Only works if you're really trying something every. You have to, if you stop and say, Oh, I'm so tired, I can't make it anymore, then you're going to stop progressing and you're actually going to go backwards. And so I was going to say, no, I'm going to get as good as I possibly can, which means I always believe in myself.

And to this day, I still believe, and I still. Fabulous. Fabulous. Well, you are an amazing success story and thank you so much for sharing your story. Now I, on my podcast my. Aim is to inspire people to lead a healthy life. And I know that for lots of people, making changes feels really difficult because we have habits, and habits are how our brain works, and we get into habits.

I'm always going on about habits, but we get into habits which are not necessarily very good for the health of our body. And people try and change habits and then, The old habits come back and then they feel disillusioned. They feel disheartened, and it's a very common story I would say to people. You have a human brain, you have a human body.

There's nothing, you're not broken. But what would be your message to those people who can see this vision of a healthy them, but somehow it feels a little bit out of grasp. They feel that they can't quite make it. What would you say to those people?

Marcia’s Message

Okay, so I set a long term goal. So my first goal when I was in the hospital was I'm going to run a 5K at the one year anniversary.

And did you? I didn't make it. Oh, . So I said, That's fine. I'm gonna make it at the two year anniversary, which I didn't make it. So if you have a goal in mind, and it's a long ways away, so it's three months, six months, a year, you have something to work. and you have something that will encourage you every single day.

So it has to be something you really care about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect. I love that. And I talk about inner motivation a lot and. You know the difference between you setting your old goal own goal and somebody saying, Hey, you need to do this. So the example is, you know, if your doctor says, Oh, you need to lower your blood pressure and you're doing it because your doctor says you need to lower your blood pressure, that's not gonna motivate you.

You need to find something that you actually want to do. And so my question is, did you ever run a 5k? No, but I did fall down and dislocate my elbow . Okay, So I was, it was just before my second anniversary and I was out running and I hit a rough patch on the sidewalk and I fell. And it's like, Okay, so maybe running isn't quite right for me.

I also, you need to find movement and exercise that lights you up. And if it's not lighting you up, find something different to do. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming and inspiring people with your amazing story. Do you have any last words of wisdom for people? Whatever that you have sitting in front of you that seems really you, you know that you have to get over that hump, whatever it is.

Just work a little bit at every day and it doesn't matter how long it takes you, as long as you're working. Perfect. Perfect. And where can people find you on the internet?

Connect with Marcia

So my website is www.strokeforward.com. That's stroke.com. And they can email me through that website. And what does that website do? Do you help people who have had strokes or do you help prevent Yeah, people from getting strokes.

You help people who've had stroke. Strokes, TBIs, any kind of drain damage. Yeah. Okay. And so you offer them support as well as Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, I offer the ISIS microcurrent enough feedback device is, which I, which has the device that enables me to talk. Again, we didn't get into that, but that's really very interesting.

If somebody has APHAs. Which is difficulty talking, speaking, I'm sorry, Talking, writing reading or communicating in general. Okay. So you have a, a device implanted. Do you? It's a device that's about this big. Yeah. And it teaches people. Actually doesn't do anything to the person other than reorganizes their brainwaves so that they can think clearly.

Again, it's, it's a miracle to me. Perfect. And so people can find out more about that on your website? Yep, absolutely. Perfect. Thank you so much for coming and sharing your, Thank you. Your experience with. Thank you so much for having me.