Help Sandi Get Her Life Back After Stroke

Hello. My name is Joe. I will start from the beginning. It was my great fortune to marry the love of my life, Sandi, over 21 yrs ago. We were young and got off to a fast start. We bought our first small home and soon had our lives enriched with two beautiful daughters. We spent the next 20 years in wedded family bliss with all the normal ups and downs life had to offer. Each and every summer on most weekends, to get much needed relief from the freezing Arctic temps, we packed up the bruised and scraped motorhome and headed into the Alaska wilderness to break from civilization and connect with the great outdoors. Fishing, 4 wheeling, and enjoying the endless light of the midnight sun coupled with the heat of a toasty campfire was bliss for just a limited time each year. During the winters we would bundle up our young daughters and venture into the freeze to trick or treat, go sledding, build snowmen, and have epic snowball fights, afterwards seeking the soul warming of a steaming hot cup of delicious cocoa. This was the life, and we enjoyed the hell out of it!!

Life seemed to be treating us well. We eventually moved from the confines of the city to the release of the country and continued to build towards our inevitable retirement and growing old together. Sandi continued to dedicate her time to commute an hour each way to her teacher assistant job with the local city school district. She worked tirelessly to improve the lives of children with special needs in an admirably magical way only she could do. She absolutely loved her job and her co-workers but most of all the kids and lives that she tried so hard to improve. Her job came with a health insurance plan and a retirement program that allowed me to start a small construction business insulating pipes and ducts where no man has ventured before. It was a decent success that provide us not riches but instead a living and some small savings for emergencies. Again, this was the life, and we were grateful to be living it.

Fast forward heading into the close of 2020, looking ahead to family and heart filled Christmas celebrations, our lives changed drastically. During the second week of December, Sandi felt a nagging pain in her neck that we assumed, like so many others, was merely the result of sleeping wrong producing a kink in her neck, so she nursed her neck pain with Tylenol and rest and waited for relief. The pain came and went over a couple days and eventually evolved into an unbearable headache that we thought was just any old headache. While I was working I received a call from her that she was vomiting and couldn’t keep her balance. I rushed home so we could make a visit to the local ER. They ran a few tests and performed some imaging then came to the mistakenly incorrect conclusion is was just a migraine deemed officially a “headache without cause.” For some reason she was treated as a third class citizen and the care was lacking. They treated her as if her symptoms weren’t real. They wouldn’t get her a wheelchair for her lack of balance resulting in two falls to the ground as she was made to walk unaccompanied to the exit. A swift kick out the door, if you will. We brought her home and she continued to rest and properly treat herself at the direction given by the hospital. The next morning she awoke to left side numbness as the headache raged on. We immediately returned to a different hospital due to the previous lack of care. After some more blood testing, even more imaging than before, and some physical diagnosis we got the worst news we had heard in over 20 years!!

Sandi had just suffered from a vertebral artery dissection in her neck in the days prior resulting in an acute right side cerebellar stroke. The arterial dissection had caused reduced and/or blocked blood flow through the artery and related capillaries which caused portions of her brain tissue to altogether die to never return.

Boom! Just like that, life was likely going to be different forever. Life changed drastically that day and the subsequent weeks and months ahead. We were just touching the tip of the iceberg not knowing what the future would hold. The recipe included frequent hospital visits, rehabilitation visits, physical therapy visits, re-imaging, re-learning, depression, anxiety, medications & pain, all mixed together to create a different approach to life and future.

The easiest of tasks would be challenging. Healing would be long and slow with no guarantee of a full recovery back to normal. A shower wouldn’t be without a chair and was akin to running a marathon. The simple task of changing clothes would be exhausting. Stroke fatigue was extremely difficult resulting in sleeping 16+ hours a day. Daily headaches persisted for months. Numbness and body temperature changes on the left side would be forever. Feelings of desperation and uselessness would taunt daily. The suffering was unmatchable. Life was different now, sadder, angrier, lonelier with an unknown future.

Her recovery has been long and slow and painful. She hasn’t been able to return to work which resulted in a major loss of income and ability to provide, loss of health insurance, loss of quality of life, and a major increase in hospital bills as a result of continuing and previous medical care.

Add this into the economic impact of Coronavirus and the subsequent slowdown of my business and you get tough times with even tougher emotions. It humbles me to ask for any small amount to help as we navigate through medical payments and seeking to pay for private insurance as well. We went from being on top of the world to struggling our way from the bottom. We promise we will appreciate each and every donation or good vibe given.

She will hopefully return someday to her love of service for others in need. Until then, we wish good

fortune and health to all folks from all walks of life. We are blessed that we have what we have and hope

life treats you all very well. Tomorrow is a new day, don’t let it escape you as it can change without warning. Be good to people and good will come to you.

Thank you!!

Joe Oathout

Husband to the love of my life forever!!