(WFLA) – It came out of nowhere. In her mind, she felt fine – but her body had collapsed. Becky Grimmer was just 30 years old when her life changed forever.
“I hit the floor. There was no warning. I didn’t feel bad. I didn’t feel woozy. I didn’t feel anything. I just hit the floor,” Grimmer said.
That was five years ago.
Grimmer suffered a massive stroke on a Saturday morning while waiting tables. A co-worker caught her just before she hit the ground.
“I kept answering him but there were no words. I was having a whole conversation with him in my head but nothing came out,” Grimmer said.
After being rushed to the hospital, doctors went through an artery in Grimmer’s leg to break up a clot in her brain. The stroke affected her left side and her speech. Her recovery would take a long time.
“The last thing to come back was her face. She had one whole side of the face paralyzed so when she would smile only half her face smiled,” Carol Grimmer, Becky’s mother, said.
Three years later it happened again. This time Grimmer was at her parents’ house. She could not remember names and her left arm went limp. Grimmer had suffered a second cryptogenic stroke – a stroke of no known cause. This stroke was not as severe as her first one and her recovery didn’t take as long.
Grimmer went on to earn her MBA and works full time at tech data in St. Petersburg. She now shares the warning signs of stroke, every chance she gets. “I feel very blessed that I got two extra chances at life,” Grimmer said.
