Photo by Jay Fram
Krysta Owings was young and healthy, riding horses and chatting with friends; within hours, she could barely see or think.
Up at dawn on Sunday for a horse show, sweating all day—Krysta Owings was thrilled to have Monday off. She and her black lab, Willow, went for a walk. Then, as Owings eased into the day, she realized her hands weren’t keeping up with her brain. “It was like a delayed reaction: OK, hands, do this. Why aren’t they doing it? Oh, OK, now they’re doing it.” She felt almost drunk, off balance and not in full control over her body. She was aware, her brain could think, but it couldn’t make her hands and feet obey, and she had no idea why not.
So she ordered Jimmy Johns, scribbling her signature and asking the delivery guy to fill in the tip because her vision was starting to blur.
And no, not at one second did she think she might be having a stroke.
She was 25 years old, and her entire family was ridiculously healthy. No heart attacks, no major diseases; she couldn’t even remember a health scare.
But she couldn’t imagine what was wrong with her. She was house-sitting for her brother, and he’d mentioned that the carbon monoxide detectors kept going off at random; maybe she had carbon monoxide poisoning?
She called a friend and asked, “Do I sound OK?”
“You’re talking kind of slowly,” the friend said. “How about we run you over to urgent care?”
Owings made a token protest, but caved in fast. Her balance was going. By the time they reached the urgent care clinic, she was stumbling and couldn’t even manage to sign in. The doctor who examined her said, “Hmm,” and sent in another doctor…and after a few more basic tests, a new urgency entered their voices. She needed to get to a hospital, now. By ambulance.
At the hospital, scans suggested an AVM (arteriovenous malformation, a mutation of blood vessels that causes them to tangle). Owings’ mother called everybody she knew, looking for an expert, and found Dr. Gregory Zipfel, a Washington University neurosurgeon. Owings was transferred to Barnes Jewish Hospital.
Meanwhile, her best friend from seventh grade was out of the country and actually flew home. “What are you doing?” Owings asked. “You’re crazy, go back!”
But her friend wasn’t so crazy to be concerned. Owings did indeed have an AVM: It had burst, and blood was leaking into her brain, which was swollen. Every day, she lost more of her vision, use of her left side, and her ability to think.
Zipfel did a craniotomy, cutting out a piece of her skull, removing the tangle of vessels and spilled blood, then fastening a titanium plate. She woke up with “the worst headache in the world,” and though she was now out of danger, recovery wasn’t instant. It took a week of physical therapy before she could even walk again, and when she looked at a clock, her mind stayed blank, unable to fathom what time it indicated. After physical therapy came speech therapy and occupational therapy. “Your brain has to rewire,” she was told. “It has to reconnect.”
As the days passed, and she practiced and practiced and practiced, Owings began to sense those connections re-forming.
“You actually feel it in your brain,” she says. “It’s like little sparks.”
Now she’s back “100 percent,” she says—and a little more. “Before, shyness stopped me from taking risks. Talking to a roomful of people, that was not me. But when it turns into something you care about, you’re not afraid.”
So she’s out there, educating everybody else about what she’d never dreamed was possible. “One of the things that shocked me in the research is, it’s not just my age, it’s a lot younger,” she says. “Kids younger than 10 can have strokes.”
Knowing that makes it easier to act fast.
