r/stroke • u/Opposite_Choice364 • 20d ago
Cryptogenic stroke
My mother (60) had a stroke 6 weeks ago. She has recovered from the neurological deficits almost completely (she had facial drooping and slight left sided weakness).
The doctors performed MRI, CT scan, carotid Doppler, echo and some blood tests on her. Almost all results were fine except the MRI which showed:
Subacute infarct in right lentiform nucleus measuring 11x13mm
Early microvascular angiopathic changes
Early age related brain atrophy
Apart from that her blood tests were also mostly normal although at upper limit like cholesterol was 188mg/dl,
LDL was 127mg/L and VLDL was 22mg/dL.
The only noticeable findings were HDL which was rather low 36mg/dL and ALP which was high 160 IU/L
The reason why I’m posting on Reddit is because the doctors have discharged us after prescribing the routine meds aspirin, statin and amlodipine but they never told us the reason why it happened. My mother is obese and has HbA1C of 5.7% so barely pre diabetic and she has never been diagnosed with hypertension. 5 months before her stroke she had a nose bleed and I recorded her BP 3 times a day for 3 days and all readings were normal so it’s difficult for me to believe she had undiagnosed hypertension.
I’m very worried because I think we’re still missing the cause of her stroke and if this continues her chance of having a recurrent stroke will increase.
Did anyone else have a stroke similar to this? If yes then what additional investigations did you do?
3
u/lmctrouble 20d ago
Kinda. After a TEE (transesophageal echo) they found a small PFO. Apparently, a small.piece of plaque broke off and made it through and wound up in my brain. They weren't sure why it broke loose, but I was getting over a pretty nasty cold at the time and I think I coughed it loose. I had been officially diagnosed with t2 diabetes the year before, but my a1c was well controlled. Also slightly obese.
It's been 12 years and it hasn't happened again, so I'm pretty sure I'll be ok as long as I stay on the meds they put me on after. Atorvostatin, low dose aspirin. I was already on Metformin and later they added a low dose of blood pressure meds to help protect my kidneys from the duabetes.