Stroke Symptoms Dismissed – What Happens When the CEO of Canada’s Optometry Body Has a Stroke

Stroke Symptoms Dismissed: François Couillard has spent his career protecting people’s vision. As the CEO of Optometry Canada, the national body representing every optometrist in the country, he understands better than almost anyone how much vision matters, what threatens it, and how to preserve it.

Then he had a stroke. And it only attacked his eyes.

The irony is not lost on François. But what makes his story essential listening for every stroke survivor and caregiver isn’t the cruel symmetry of it; it’s what happened at the emergency department before his stroke even reached its worst point.

His symptoms were dismissed. He was sent home.

When Stroke Symptoms Are Dismissed

François arrived at the ER with symptoms. He was assessed and sent home. What the medical team didn’t know and what François didn’t yet know was that he was mid-stroke.

He walked home alone in the middle of the night.

This is not an isolated story. Stroke symptoms dismissed at the emergency department are more common than most people realise, particularly when the presentation is atypical. Symptoms that don’t match the classic FAST criteria, such as facial drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulties, and time to call, can be overlooked, minimised, or misattributed. Visual disturbances, in particular, are frequently missed.

For François, the consequences became clear the next morning.

Waking Up With Vision Loss After Stroke

François woke up having lost the right visual field in both eyes permanently. The condition is called homonymous hemianopia: a stroke-related vision loss that removes the same portion of the visual field from each eye simultaneously.

Here is what makes it disorienting: the brain doesn’t show you the gap. It fills it in. You don’t see darkness where the vision is missing, you see what your brain invents to complete the picture. You look normal. You appear, in many ways, almost normal.

But you are not.

The Hidden Cost of Stroke Vision Loss

What François describes and what many survivors with stroke-related vision changes will recognise is the extraordinary cognitive load of compensating for what you can no longer see.

The brain works continuously to fill in the missing visual field. That work is invisible to everyone around you. There’s no cast, no limp, no obvious marker. But the fatigue it generates is profound and relentless.

This is the invisible disability that follows many stroke survivors: the gap between how they appear and the effort required to simply exist in a world that assumes full function. Stroke vision loss recovery is rarely straightforward, and the fatigue accompanying it is one of the least-discussed consequences of stroke.

François knows this intimately. He continues to live it.

One Week Post-Stroke: 100km on the Bike

One week after his stroke, François completed a 100km cycling event.

One week. 100 kilometres.

This isn’t recklessness, it’s the character of the man. A pragmatist who processes by doing, who defines himself not by what has been taken but by what remains. His approach to his stroke carries a dark honesty: he hasn’t minimised what happened, but he hasn’t surrendered to it either.

The 100km ride is not a metaphor. It happened.

Returning to Lead a National Health Organisation

François returned to his role as CEO of Optometry Canada. He leads a national health organisation while navigating permanent vision loss, invisible fatigue, and the ongoing adaptation that stroke demands.

He also carries the particular weight of professional identity intersecting with personal experience. The man who has advocated for Canadians’ vision health now lives with the consequences of a stroke that targeted exactly that. He has become, in a specific and irreversible way, both the professional and the patient.

That dual perspective, the insider who became the survivor, gives his voice a precision that very few stroke stories carry.

What This Episode Is Really About

Episode 406 of the Recovery After Stroke podcast is not simply about vision therapy after stroke, although François discusses that too. It is about what happens when stroke symptoms are dismissed and the cascade that follows. It is about the invisible burden of neurological fatigue. It is about identity, adaptation, and the kind of resilience that doesn’t announce itself.

If your stroke symptoms were dismissed, or you know someone whose were, François’s story will feel familiar in a way that is both validating and important. If you are navigating stroke vision loss and wondering whether the fatigue you feel is real, it is, and François names it plainly.

Listen to Episode 406 with François Couillard available now on all major podcast platforms.

Bill’s book – The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened

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