Meet Riley — Perinatal Stroke
I remember exactly where I was when I got the call from the neurologist. She had finished reviewing Riley’s MRI and told me that, without a doubt in her mind, Riley had suffered a stroke just prior to birth.
Eight months prior to this call, Riley had been hospitalized for almost a week after having a nearly 11 hour seizure. The doctors had discharged her with daily seizure medication and a diagnosis of hemiplegic cerebral palsy, resulting from what they said was a brain malformation. We were living in a foreign country at the time and, because of the language barrier, the word stroke had never come up. I wasn’t satisfied with the vague explanation of a malformation and so it wasn’t until almost 8 months later that we would finally see an American specialist and begin to understand exactly what had happened.
Riley was born just a week early and I had my dream labor. I spent the majority of my labor at home and arrived at the hospital just in time for a quick water birth. Riley began exhibiting strange movements when she was just hours old, but they were quickly dismissed by the doctors. The same movements continued over the coming months, but they were again dismissed by her pediatrician. We moved overseas when she was 7 months old and I began to notice that she had a definite hand preference. She would not use her right hand to grasp anything and usually kept it tightly fisted. When she was 11 months old, she had the 11 hour seizure that landed her in the hospital and when we began our journey.
Since Riley’s diagnosis over 5 years ago, she has attended more therapy and doctor’s appointments than most people will in an entire lifetime. Unfortunately her seizures continued and worsened to the point where, when she was just over 4 years old, she underwent a radical surgery called a hemispherectomy. She had the two hemispheres of her brain disconnected and part of the left hemisphere removed, all in an attempt to stop her near daily seizures and give her a life that she deserved. She has been almost seizure free since surgery and was truly given a second chance at life.
Riley is now almost 6 ½ years old and if you ask anyone that knows her, they will tell you that she is truly one of the happiest kids that they have ever met. While therapy appointments still consume our life, we consider every one of her therapists a part of our family. I remember the neurologist telling me that Riley had suffered a stroke, but it wasn’t until a few years later when I had really wrapped my head around everything going on that it occurred to me that she had not suffered a stroke, but she had survived one. Riley is the definition of a survivor and lives life every single day as such. While this may not have been the life I would have chosen for her, I could never dream of our life any other way.
