Brenton Parr had felt dizzy like this twice before. But this time, early in the morning, as he looked out of the window of a spare bedroom to check the weather before heading to the gym, it was far worse.
“I felt as though the whole room and world were starting to spin around me, and I thought, ‘I need to get on the floor right now,’” said Parr, 57, of that moment the morning of Feb. 4. “I realized that whatever was happening this time was at a more intense level than before. I couldn’t see very well, so I was squinting.”
His partner found Parr crumpled next to the window a few minutes later.
“I think I am having a stroke,” Parr told him. “He told me to go sit on the sofa, and I said I couldn’t get to the sofa and needed medical attention immediately.”
A series of events unfolded, beginning with treatment in his driveway by a mobile stroke unit, to a handover to a UTHealth Houston neurology stroke team, and culminating with heart surgery to correct a birth defect believed to be the cause of the stroke.