Ann Faidley – Stroke Success Story

Ann Faidley – getting stronger every day after stroke treatment and rehabilitation

Ann Faidley and her husband, Paul, are back
to enjoying life after she received stroke treatment
at Methodist Charlton Medical Center

Ann Faidley woke up at 4 a.m. and got out of bed. She tried to walk but could not keep her balance. Everywhere she looked in her room, she saw double.

“What in the world is going on?” she wondered, then got back into bed and pulled the covers over her.

“I’ll just go back to sleep,” she thought. “Maybe it will go away.” She didn’t wake her husband or her son to tell them what was happening.

A little later, she woke up again when she heard her husband moving about in the room.

“Something bad is going on with me,” she told him. Paul Faidley called their son Wes, a surgical technologist, to the bedroom. He took one look at his mom and said, “We need to call 911 right now.”

The second stroke struck hard

Faidley was taken to the emergency department (ED) at Methodist Charlton Medical Center, where she was treated by Charles Tuen, MD, independently practicing neurologist on the hospital’s medical staff.

“She was experiencing double vision and loss of coordination on her left side,” Dr. Tuen says, adding that further testing confirmed that Faidley had had a stroke. But this stroke was not her first.

The first stroke took place several years earlier but hadn’t been nearly as severe. Back then, some of the fingers of her left hand were numb. This time, her entire left hand was numb. After the first stroke, she was able to walk with the help of a cane or walker. This time, she was not able to walk at all. Also, the second stroke affected the area of the brain that controls eye movement and balance, which resulted in the vision and walking problems.

The road to recovery following a stroke

Faidley spent four days at Methodist Charlton receiving diagnostic testing, therapy, and medical treatment. She was then transferred to Methodist Rehabilitation Hospital for two weeks, where extensive therapy helped her to regain balance, improve her walking, and restore her vision.

“Methodist Charlton and Methodist Rehabilitation Hospital are fantastic facilities,” she says. “The staff is great — you couldn’t ask for nicer. And I feel wonderful — stronger than I did before the stroke.”

From the spring 2013 edition of Shine magazine.