Sorry for the long post…

3 weeks ago felt like I had bad man-flu. Started on Sunday, carried on through the week and I took Thursday off work. Went back on Friday as I felt recovered. Felt loads better on Saturday so I did a 60 mile road ride.

Saturday night I felt like I was slightly sunburnt and Sunday I was exhausted and didn’t feel right. Slept throughout the afternoon and evening. I took Monday off work and booked a doctors appointment for the afternoon. Again I slept through the morning.

Went into the doctors and felt terrible. Started telling him what was wrong, but to my surprise all my words came out jumbled up or I couldn’t speak the words at all.

Although I felt like I was burning up, heart rate, blood pressure and temperature were all normal.

The doc put me in a taxi and sent me off to a&e. Unfortunately when we got there I had no cash to pay him with, was too confused to use a cash machine and ended up walking away from the hospital.

Woke up at 5am, panicking that I hadn’t picked my youngest up from school (I had) and Mrs Mcavennie ended up calling an ambulance as I either couldn’t talk or was talking crap.

Spent the day up at hospital having loads of scans and tests which all showed normal results. By mid afternoon I could talk normally again, and they sent me home in the evening.

Got called back up the next day and had an mri scan, another ecg and another ct scan. The doctor said that elimination suggested a TIA, despite me being in really good health and at very low risk from one and that more tests would come (24 hour ecg). I am not allowed to drive for a month but both the consultant and my gp have said it’s OK to cycle.

This was 2 weeks ago and I’ve heard nothing on tests. I feel great, and have done some riding but am being told by everyone to take it easy. I’m also scared to push it. Before this, I was in really good shape, riding 100 miles a week on average, with a pretty good diet.

Has anyone had anything like this and got any advice? Feel like I’m stuck in limbo now, and with a family to support, feel slightly selfish pushing myself and possibly risking my health.

I wonder if that’s something they diagnose when they’ve not got a clue what really happened.

Does sound a bit like a TIA to me, you are right they are mini strokes and can often lead to a full stroke.

I’ve had what they thought was a TIA about 13 years ago when I had pins and needles all over and couldn’t move or talk for about 30 minutes, it knocked me for six and took me the following week to fully recover.

I ended up sleeping for pretty much the following 48 hours afterwards.

Get on to the hospital for results – keep trying the consultant.
I would say keep it low key until you know what was the cause, but once you do and it can hopefully be managed or not require managing you should be able to build things back up again.
Don’t rush it.

Get the results, annoy the hell out of them till you do. They told my old man he had a TIA…it was worse..
Get diagnosed

My dad had a rash of these 5-10 years ago; 3 in quick succession I think it was. It was exactly like a mini-stroke, dropped side of body, unable to speak properly, he thought he was completely normal. He was otherwise healthy and very fit and didn’t fall into any of the usual risk groups (the only two risk categories he sort of fell into were blood pressure and cholesterol but neither serious). Like you he had loads of tests and scans which showed nothing. He’s on blood pressure and cholesterol meds now to be on the safe side and hasn’t had another occurrence since (fingers crossed).

He was fine within a couple of hours of each of his. In fact, on the last occasion it happened at home, the out of hours doctor threatened to call an ambulance and he snapped out of it in 30s (it was very weird, from PHHHAARRNNNUUURRRGGGHHH speech to ‘oh no you’re not calling an ambulance, don’t you dare!’ in literally 30s).

Ok, will keep on at the consultant. I’ve also booked a general health assessment in the meantime.

Sounds similar to what I had just before Christmas.

Working on some nice, detailed technical specifications, started writing an email to go with them and found I couldn’t type coherent words. Single finger-concentration, sure I had them right, but they were all nonsence. After ten mins of trying, I sent what I thought was a good enough email.

Tried to explain to a colleague ‘take this thing to that person’ but I couldn’t remember the word for the thing, or the name of the person. Drove to my office, where my wife happened to be working that day. By then my words had come back.

Called the GP, who suspected a TIA and sent for an emergancy paramedic. They checked me over, filled me with extra-strong asprin and sent me home under strict instructions to do nothing other than call 999 if anything else odd happened, and that I would hear form the stroke team. By the time I was home I had an appointment with the stroke clinic waiting for me the next morning.

Had a vascular ultrasound, EEG, poked, prodded and measured, and went through to the consultant, who was fantastic. In my case he diagnosed a ‘migraine without the pain bit’ through temporary vascular constriction. This was due to my symptoms coming on slowly – I started with a ‘halo’ in my vision, slowly progressing to tingling, then loss of words – no sudden ‘bang and it’s gone’, then a very quick recovery. He also got to read the email I sent, which was amusingly unreadable. He found that fascinating, as he’d experienced lots of stroke victims losing words through speech, but this was the first time he had seen them lost through writing as well – it knocked out my coordination and vocabulary, rather than basic speech functions.

I was also given an MRI scan to confirm, as I’ve never had a migraine before, and I in the very low risk of stroke group. This came back with no sign of TIA, and I’ve never had anything like it since.

A migraine diagnosis also meant I could drive, whereas a TIA would stop me driving until given an all-clear.

I’m now suspecting it was low level carbon monoxide poisoning, as I was working on a boat at the time with a diesel heater running, since discovered to have a failed and leaking gasket.

Kaysee – yes, that sounds very familiar. I have texts I sent people from the hospital that make no sense!

I have similar with Migraines, feel utterly confused and struggle to get words out. no real pain as such. horrid feeling and takes days to get over.

i’d suggest if there is no definitive proof of a TIA you keep pushing for a firm diagnosis before rushing into anything. If it does go down the migraine route, you may never get another, they may become more common.