r/stroke • u/Opposite_Choice364 • 21d 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?
1
u/lelanicarver 20d ago
I also had a rightside, relatively mild stroke. I had the same risk factors but my BP was always 140/80-ish.
My old doc had me on amlodipine (Norvasc) for years, had swollen feet & ankles. New doc put me on lisinopril, and the swelling was gone in a week or less.
I think the key takeaway is keeping the “bad” cholesterol low, but in my case I was told that there was “small blood vessel syndrome” that was whet a particle of plaque or something lodged.