“her right side has some feeling and better movement, but not full movement or precise movement. she has double vision. her depth perception is off,” kish, 36, explains, wanting to share her story as a wakeup call to others. “her speaking is slurred, which is what she struggles with the most, just not being able to communicate properly.”
how could this have happened to her vibrant mom, a social worker who was very active and dedicated to her work and family?
high blood pressure (hypertension): the underlying cause
kish made a discovery sorting through things at her mom’s house while she was in the hospital: a blood pressure cuff machine and prescription medication for hypertension that was dated a few years earlier.
“she didn’t really talk about it. she didn’t mention it. i hardly knew. i heard it in passing from my brother who said, ‘you’ve got to monitor that.’ i didn’t really know what that even meant.”
looking back, kish says her mom likely felt healthy and strong and thought she didn’t need medication to control her blood pressure. “i think she just thought, ‘i’m an active woman, i eat healthy, my body is healthy, my weight is healthy, i’m healthy.’ you can’t see high blood pressure and she didn’t feel her high blood pressure. ultimately, it affected a vessel in her brainstem.”
she was making plans to retire from work not long before her stroke. she had accomplished a lot, and wrote a book of fiction,
where mary went
, to pass on her family stories as an indigenous woman. mama lynne’s grandmother was taken from her family to a residential school in brantford, ont. the book is about an indigenous woman after residential schooling and how the experience affected her life.
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