DENVER — A stroke was the last thing 33-year-old Shyhesha Simmons thought would ever happen to her.
Simmons, a single mom with three young children, is a vegan who works as a dispatcher for Kroger stores.
“I make sure that Krogers and the King Soopers from Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah have their groceries every single day. So dealing with truckers, from the logistics to Krogers itself, making sure they get their loads every single day, 24 hours a day. So, it is something that's nonstop," Simmons explained. "It's busy, it's hard. It takes half of your day, takes a lot of your time.”
In early August, Simmons was working a long shift. Naturally, she thought she was tired.
“Anybody would think you're tired going right back into work. So I just thought I was tired. I was really blurry-eyed and tried to get myself focused," Simmons explained. “I just kept denying it. I'm just tired. I'm just tired. Let me just get back focused. Let me just concentrate. And then slowly, it wasn't me who noticed symptoms but somebody else that noticed symptoms.”
Simmons ended up falling out of her chair and could not stand back up on her own. She was rushed to UCHealth's University of Colorado Hospital on the Anschutz Medical Campus. Inside the ambulance, she learned she was having a stroke.
“I couldn't move at all. Like, at all," said Simmons. "Now you've been through so much in your life, so much trauma in your life. I know you could do it, but I couldn't do it. That was the hardest part.”
Once at the hospital, doctors determined she would need surgery to remove the blood clot from her brain. After surgery, Simmons regained her ability to move, but her road to recovery was far from over.
She struggled with walking after the stroke and dealt with extreme fatigue. Doctors told Simmons it may take 18 months to fully heal. She is set to have another medical procedure in a few weeks and will have to take certain medications for the rest of her life.
Medical bills have also piled up for the single mom, totaling around $20,000 at this point. She has set up a GoFundMe online fundraiser to help pay those bills.
“I was told, basically, your body is kind of grieving because you kind of lost a part of yourself in the sense you lost a part of your brain that you can't get back... You do get overstimulated, and that's one of the things I do find I'm still having to deal with now, especially going back into work and then still being a mom," said Simmons. “It definitely gets overwhelming. It's just, like, it just don't stop. It just don't stop.”
Simmons believes the stress in her life contributed to the stroke.
“I know that there's a lot of Black women out there that go through strokes every day that work hard, they got children. And we all need to know. We all need to take care of our bodies," said Simmons.
Strokes, which are normally thought of as something that could happen as we age, are increasingly affecting young adults, according to UCHealth.
"A stroke is an injury to the brain that's caused by a problem in a blood vessel. And that can either be from a blood vessel being clogged — so not enough blood flow gets to a part of the brain and that part of the brain dies — or it can be caused by bleeding from a blood vessel inside the brain and into the brain tissue," explained Dr. Sharon Poisson, a vascular neurologist with UCHealth on the Anschutz Medical Campus.
Dr. Poisson said there is evidence of strokes increasing in young adults over the last few decades, while the overall number of strokes decreased during that same time period.
“We think that in older adults, there is a trend towards fewer strokes because perhaps we're doing better at preventing strokes. But in that same time period, we're seeing an increase in the number of strokes that are happening among young adults," Dr. Poisson said. “We know more about stroke, and we have more information about medications that can help prevent stroke. And in addition to that, I think the awareness of vascular risk factors — things that put people at risk of both stroke and heart disease — has been brought to the public attention more and people are taking more seriously some of those risk factors.”
According to Dr. Poisson, risk factors for stroke include high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, atrial fibrillation, obesity, decreased exercise, sleep apnea, smoking, and heavy alcohol use.
“Part of the reason [for increased strokes in young adults] may be because we're seeing more of these vascular risk factors like high blood pressure and diabetes in younger age groups, and perhaps we're not doing a great job of treating those early in life," said Dr. Poisson.
Young women appear to be suffering strokes at a greater rate than their male counterparts. Dr. Poisson said there is research being conducted to try and learn why that is.
“We see more strokes in young women than we see in young men. And so things like pregnancy and complications from pregnancy, like preeclampsia, may play into that," said Dr. Poisson. “We're interested in learning more about the connection between migraine and stroke. We've discovered a lot about PFO, which is a heart condition that can sometimes be associated with stroke in young adults. So we don't know the answer yet, a lot more research to do, but I think we're starting to make progress in learning more.”
Dr. Poisson said that Black and Hispanic Americans are at an elevated risk for stroke when compared to white Americans.
Denver7 asked Dr. Poisson if birth control plays any role in stroke likelihood for young women.
“We certainly know that birth control, especially containing estrogen, can increase the risk of clot formation. And so in some populations of people, [it] may increase the risk of stroke, and especially in older young adults. So like, over the age of 35 who are smokers and have migraines, we know that's a really high-risk population, and a population where we should try to avoid things like extra estrogen," Dr. Poisson said. “On the other hand, pregnancy is a risk factor for stroke. And so contraception of some sort, I think, is really important for some people, for many reasons. And so I don't think that the whole trend of what we're seeing with stroke in young adults can be blamed on birth control. I think that if it plays a part, it would be a very small part of it.”
Dr. Poisson said young adults with stroke symptoms are less likely to call 911. Once at the hospital, she said it normally takes a longer amount of time to diagnose those patients, too.
“Knowing the signs of stroke and being aware that stroke can happen anytime across the age spectrum is really critical so that we can do a better job of recognizing stroke early," said Dr. Poisson. “Even a 30-minute delay in treatment can be a significant change in functional outcome. So, there are some things we can do to try to stop the stroke in its tracks, but we have a short time window to do that.”
The acronym recommended to remember the signs and symptoms of a stroke is BE FAST.
- B – Balance: Sudden difficulty standing or walking
- E – Eyes: Sudden loss of vision or double vision
- F – Face: Drooping or uneven smile
- A – Arm weakness
- S – Speech: Difficulty speaking, slurred or jumbled speech
- T – Time to call 911 if you observe any symptoms
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