WHEN SHERRY ROSS arrived at work, out of breath, her colleagues knew something was wrong.
Ross, an occupational therapist, was a paragon of fitness, exercising every day, eating right, not smoking. She even held a part-time job as a fitness instructor at GoodLife. This was not someone who did much huffing and puffing.
Luckily, I was at the Veterans Affairs (Canada) district office and one of the nurses that I work with there noticed that I was extremely short of breath after coming up one flight of steps, which she knows is very unusual for me, given how much I work out, Ross said, recounting the events of Dec. 11.
So she asked if I was OK, and noticed that the left side of my face was drooped.
I remember her asking me if I was all right, and I said, Yeah, yeah, Im fine. And she said, No, I dont think you are.
At 45, Ross was having a stroke.
Her mother had one at 47, but she was a smoker.
Ross played volleyball and ran cross-country while a student at Halifax West High School, and has been a fitness instructor since 2000. She and her fiance moved into a new house in the fall.
Shortly after slumping to the floor before her worried co-worker could get to her, Ross was in an ambulance, unable to process what was happening.
I was awake but I wasnt with it at this point. So I knew I was in the ambulance going to the hospital, but I had no idea how long it took to get there or any of that, she said. But within the hour they did a CT scan and found that I had a blood clot on the right side of my brain.
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A stroke out of nowhere