TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – When she was just 30 years old, Lauren Barnathan suffered a stroke.

“The last thing I cared about was planning this wedding and picking out hors d’oeuvres and a dress. I was just focused on staying alive and rehabilitating myself,” said Lauren. 

“The whole time I was in complete denial,” she told 8 On Your Side’s Gabrielle Shirley. “As we were lying down in bed, I went to go turn over or I guess I was trying to turn over. But at the time, unbeknownst to me, the left side of my body was completely unable to be used.”

Lauren’s husband Adam recalls her moving in a strange way.

“I turned over to check on her and immediately, my eyes focused on her symptoms,” he said. “She had a facial droop, she had no use of the left side of her body and she had slurred speech. I knew immediately it was a stroke.”

Adam, who was engaged to Lauren at the time, is actually a resident physician in emergency medicine. He called 911.

“It is terrifying to me, what could have happened if I had gone to sleep or if she had gone to sleep because we see it all the time in the hospital,” Adam said.

Lauren spent five days recovering in the hospital.

“The doctors were asking me to move my left arm,” recalled Lauren. “And I just remember staring at it and I just was thinking, ‘If I can get my elbow up, the rest of my arm will follow.’ That did not happen. I just stared at it.”

The couple got married in their Tampa apartment days after Lauren was discharged from the hospital. The date was Jan. 28, 2018.

“We wanted to go ahead and get legally married while we could as fast as we could in the event that anything happens again,” said Lauren.

They celebrated their love with a larger wedding in June. Then, one year after her stroke, Lauren and Adam ran the Publix Gasparilla Half Marathon together.

“It was a goal that I set for myself,” said Lauren. “I walked past the Tampa Convention Center on the Riverwalk while I was recovering from my stroke, saw people signing up the year before, and said, ‘I am going to do that next year.’ And we went and ran it. Adam ran it with me. He was slightly faster than I was but I still finished.”

“I would like it on the record that I finished first only so I could see her cross the finish line,” said Adam with a laugh. “Not because I was competitive in any way. When she crossed the finish line, I may have cried a little bit. It was really incredible.”

The race marked the first time either of them had run a half marathon. They trained for it together on the Riverwalk and they have become more and more focused on running since that race. 

The couple is thankful Lauren has made a full physical recovery. But they want to use their experience to educate other people on the signs of a stroke. They want you to remember two words: 

BE FAST

“B” stands for BALANCE LOSS

“E” stands for EYESIGHT LOSS

“F” stands for FACIAL DROOPING

“A” stands for ARM WEAKNESS 

“S” stands for SPEECH DIFFICULTY

“T” stands for TIME TO CALL 911

“It is so time sensitive,” said Lauren. “And people, unfortunately, wait and wait and wait and their symptoms become worse and worse and, by the time they do go to the hospital and they are diagnosed, they are outside of a time-sensitive window for certain interventions and treatments.”

Lauren told us she initially questioned how she could have a stroke at her age. She learned she tore one of the carotid arteries in her neck.

“It created a pouch within itself and, within that pouch, a blood clot formed, dislodged, and went to my brain blocking blood flow to the right side of my brain,” said Lauren. “I talk about my stroke every day. I am in the medical speech pathology industry so I talk about it often. I will disclose it to my patients because having somebody who has been through it makes it more relatable.”

If you would like to learn any additional information on the symptoms of a stroke, you can visit the following website: strokeawareness.com.