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A Stroke of Luck
"I am dead," thought Kate Adamson. "It's not shiny for me or bright. No past lives go rushing by, no present life comes before my eyes... I am a 33-year-old foetus."
In 1995 Adamson, a married mother of two young children, living in California and training to become a fitness instructor, suffered a sudden and devastating pontine stroke. A tiny blood vessel broke in her brain and she bled just a thumbnail's worth of blood into the "pons" (the part of the brain stem that connects the brain to the outside world), and was left totally paralysed. Although capable of conscious thought, she was unable to communicate with the outside world.
When her youngest daughter was 17 months old, Adamson began experiencing migraines. Then one Wednesday evening the pain became so intense she took a mild sleeping pill and went to bed. The next morning the headache was still there. Waves of dizziness swept over her.
"Wake up," she told her husband, "I think I need help now." That was the last coherent sentence she uttered. Then the sound of sirens; neighbours gathering in the street; her children pounding on the door of the ambulance. Fear. Disorientation. "Please somebody help!" she thought. "I'm frightened! Why can't I say what I am thinking?"
A surgeon leaning over her saying: "Great news, Kate. You've suffered a stroke. We found the problem. Your vertebral artery is occluded." She wondered how this could be good news.
Does Kate Adamson feel lucky to be alive? "Yes. Very lucky. But it took time for me to feel that way." The story of her recovery is inspirational. It was slow. It was exhausting. She made mistakes. She was angry. She was depressed.
It took her 10 infinite days to blink her first "yes" to a question, after medics thought she was brain dead. Then it was a long, exhausting struggle to attain her goals: picking up her children again, visiting a mall in a wheelchair, learning to walk, drive and function again.
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Adamson now travels the US working as a phenomenally successful motivational speaker and campaigning for more funding for heart and stroke research. She has testified before the US Congress and is regularly called as an expert witness in court to describe the pain and suffering of "locked-in syndrome". She's a national spokesperson for the American Stroke Association and has written two acclaimed books (Kate's Journey and Paralyzed but not Powerless).
"I've become a different person... I used to be driven by fear... I'm stronger now.
"To look at me today," she says, "you wouldn't know what happened to me. But I can't use my left arm. And I walk with a limp."
It's the little things that get her down. "I used to love high-heeled shoes. If I walk into a room today, I'll check out all the other women's shoes."
Having saved her own life, Adamson is now empowered to help other people change theirs. "We all have something we struggle with. We're all different... And what I tell people is that it's OK to feel angry and discouraged. What's not OK is to stop... So no matter how tired or depressed you feel, you just have to take those baby steps. Focus on what you can do."
While she was fighting to reinvent herself as a new woman, Adamson also divorced her husband. But three years ago they remarried. "When you've got kids," she says, "you're always connected. I had a lot to work through, finding who I am now".
So does Adamson feel lucky?
"Do you know what my licence plate says?" she laughs. "Stroke of Luck."
