KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Strokes can happen to anyone at any age, according to the American Heart Association. Globally, about one in four adults over the age of 25 will have a stroke in their lifetime.
Danny Goldammer had his stroke in February 2021 when he was 35 years old.
He called for his wife, Lindsay, who is a nurse at Research Medical Center. Lindsay said she didn’t know Danny was having a stroke when she first came to his side.
“Everybody knows he's very much a jokester, and so when he looked at me and said, 'The sky is green eggs and ham,' I just started laughing," she said. "I was like, I laughed at him. I said, 'You're joking with me, you're messing with me.' And then he said, 'I can't feel my left side.'"
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She then assessed him for a stroke and called 911.
Lindsay was Danny’s advocate in the ER in the months that followed. The stroke caused short-term memory loss, vision loss and other physical barriers.
“In the first six months, it's you feel good and then you feel real bad and then you'd feel better and you'd feel like you're higher than you were the last time you felt this good, and then you'd fall back down and feel bad again,” Danny said.
Danny is alive thanks to a life-saving blood clot removal.
Dr. Ashish Kulhari was Danny’s doctor at Research Medical Center. He said Danny’s age was somewhat unusual, but it isn’t impossible to have a stroke that young.
Kulhari said the cause was a damaged blood vessel.
“That's one of the most common causes of having a stroke in young patients because otherwise usually they're healthy," he said. "They don't have the regular risk factors of high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol.”
Today, Danny is back to hunting and going out on the boat with his wife and kids.
Know the signs of a stroke thanks to the acronym FAST — Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, Time to call 911.
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