Surviving an Ischemic Stroke: Roderick Jefferson’s Journey with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy and Recovery

Surviving an Ischemic Stroke: The Connection Between Ischemic Stroke and Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, and How Self-Care Can Help

An ischemic stroke is a life-altering event that occurs when a blood clot blocks the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the brain, leading to brain cell damage or death. It is the most common type of stroke, accounting for nearly 87% of all stroke cases. One lesser-known contributor to ischemic strokes is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a genetic heart condition that can increase the risk of blood clots.

But, how does hypertrophic cardiomyopathy lead to ischemic stroke? And what self-care steps can individuals take to manage this condition and reduce the risk of stroke?

What is Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy?

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a genetic heart disorder where the heart muscle becomes abnormally thickened. While some people with HCM may experience no symptoms, others can develop serious complications such as arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats), heart failure, or the formation of blood clots.

The thickened heart muscle often affects how the heart pumps blood, leading to turbulence in blood flow, which may result in clot formation. If these clots travel to the brain, they can block an artery, causing an ischemic stroke.

How Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Increases Stroke Risk

Individuals with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy are at a higher risk for ischemic strokes due to several factors related to the condition:

1. Blood Clot Formation: As blood struggles to flow properly through a thickened heart, clots can form in the heart chambers, particularly if arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation are present.
2. Atrial Fibrillation (AFib): HCM is commonly associated with AFib, which causes the heart to beat irregularly. These irregular beats may cause blood to pool in the heart chambers, further increasing the risk of clots.
3. Reduced Blood Flow: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can impair the heart’s ability to pump blood effectively. Inadequate circulation increases the chances of clot formation, which can eventually lead to ischemic strokes.

Understanding this connection between hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and ischemic stroke is crucial, but more importantly, managing both conditions through self-care is vital for preventing stroke and maintaining overall health.

Self-Care for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Managing hypertrophic cardiomyopathy effectively can significantly reduce the risk of ischemic stroke. Here are some key self-care strategies for those living with HCM:

1. Regular Cardiologist Visits: Routine monitoring is essential to manage HCM. A cardiologist can track heart function, identify any irregularities, and adjust treatment plans as necessary. Monitoring heart rhythm with devices like a Holter monitor can detect arrhythmias early, allowing for timely intervention.
2. Medication Management: Many people with HCM are prescribed medications to manage symptoms and reduce stroke risk. These may include:
   • Beta-blockers or calcium channel blockers to improve heart function and reduce symptoms like shortness of breath.
   • Blood thinners (anticoagulants) to prevent blood clots from forming, especially if atrial fibrillation is present. It’s crucial to take medications exactly as prescribed and consult your doctor before making any changes.
3. Adopting a Heart-Healthy Diet: A well-balanced diet can reduce the overall stress on the heart. Focus on foods that are low in sodium and rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats. Limiting alcohol and caffeine consumption is also recommended, as these can exacerbate arrhythmias.
4. Regular Physical Activity: While heavy exertion is often discouraged in individuals with HCM, regular moderate exercise can improve heart health and overall well-being. Activities like walking, swimming, and yoga are excellent options. Always consult your healthcare provider before starting any new exercise regimen to ensure it’s safe.
5. Managing Stress: Emotional and physical stress can trigger arrhythmias or worsen HCM symptoms. Stress management techniques like meditation, breathing exercises, and mindfulness practices can help reduce stress levels, improving heart health and overall well-being.
6. Sleep Hygiene: Getting adequate, restful sleep is essential for heart health. Individuals with HCM should prioritize good sleep hygiene, including maintaining a regular sleep schedule and creating a relaxing bedtime routine. Poor sleep can exacerbate heart conditions, increasing the risk of clot formation.
7. Monitoring Symptoms: Self-awareness is key in managing hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Pay attention to symptoms like shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, or palpitations. If these symptoms worsen or new symptoms develop, it’s important to seek medical advice promptly.
8. Atrial Fibrillation Management: If AFib is a complication of HCM, managing it carefully is crucial to reducing the risk of ischemic stroke. Medications, lifestyle changes, and even surgical options (like catheter ablation) may be recommended by a cardiologist to keep arrhythmias in check.

Preventing Ischemic Stroke in HCM Patients

For individuals with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, preventing ischemic stroke requires a proactive approach to heart health. In addition to self-care practices, there are several other preventive measures:

• Regular Blood Pressure Monitoring: High blood pressure can further strain the heart, increasing the risk of stroke. Monitor your blood pressure regularly, and take steps to keep it within a healthy range through medication or lifestyle adjustments.
• Quit Smoking: Smoking is a significant risk factor for both heart disease and stroke. Quitting smoking dramatically reduces the risk of ischemic stroke, especially in people with underlying heart conditions like HCM.
• Stay Hydrated: Dehydration can affect blood pressure and increase the risk of clot formation. Be sure to drink enough water throughout the day to keep your blood flow steady and your body functioning optimally.

Conclusion

Managing hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is essential for reducing the risk of ischemic stroke. By understanding the connection between these two conditions and taking proactive steps through self-care—such as managing medications, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and monitoring symptoms—individuals can significantly improve their heart health and reduce their risk of stroke.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy doesn’t have to lead to an ischemic stroke. With the right care, attention, and prevention strategies, those living with HCM can lead a healthier, more fulfilling life while minimizing their stroke risk.

Roderick Jefferson’s Journey with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy and Recovery

Discover how a near-death ischemic stroke caused by hypertrophic cardiomyopathy led to an extraordinary recovery journey filled with resilience.

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Highlights:

00:00 Introduction
01:55 The Early Signs of Stroke
06:38 The Out-of-Body Experience
13:07 Dealing With The Post-Stroke Deficits
17:13 The Survivor’s Guilt
27:41 Dealing With Emotions After A Stroke
35:16 The Pseudobulbar Affect
45:24 Changing Lives
55:41 Developing Empathy After A Stroke
1:03:33 Having The Time For Reflection
1:12:26 All Because Of The Stroke
1:18:14 The Hardest Thing About The Stroke
1:20:55 The Lessons From The Stroke

Transcript:

Introduction – Ischemic Stroke Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy With Roderick Jefferson

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
Hello everybody, and welcome to episode 325, of the recovery after stroke podcast. I am your host, Bill Gasiamis, and today I’m excited to bring to you the incredible story of Roderick Jefferson, a keynote speaker and a stroke survivor who faced a near death ischemic stroke caused by hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. In this episode, Roderick takes us through his remarkable journey how he flatlined during his stroke, the profound experience of seeing his late mother and the miraculous recovery that stunned the doctors.

Bill Gasiamis 0:40
Roderick opens up about the physical and emotional challenges he overcame, including battling aphasia, regret, regaining his motor skills and confronting survivor’s guilt. His story will resonate deeply with anyone navigating stroke recovery and inspire those looking for hope. Now, just before we jump into roderick’s journey, I want to take a moment to thank all of you who support the podcast. A special shout out to those who leave comments on the YouTube channel every day.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13
You’re amazing, your stories insights and support creates a community that uplifts and encourages others. I’d also like to thank the nearly 50 incredible people who have already left five star reviews on Spotify, and the many more who have done the same on iTunes. Your reviews help other stroke survivors find the show, and they mean the world to me. If you haven’t yet, please consider leaving a rating or review as it truly helps others find this valuable content.

Bill Gasiamis 1:45
Roderick Jefferson, welcome to the podcast.

Roderick Jefferson 1:48
Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:51
Absolute pleasure, tell me a little bit about what happened to you.

The Early Signs of Ischemic Stroke Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Roderick Jefferson 1:55
So my stroke was about two and a half years ago. I am a keynote speaker. I was down in Los Angeles. I live up in San Francisco, Bay Area. So I was down in LA on a site visit, just checking out the place, getting ready for a keynote, and then I felt myself feeling really, really tired, not like I’d been working out too much, but a level of tired that I just never felt, and so we went to dinner, had couple cocktails, and felt like, other than that, a normal day.

Roderick Jefferson 2:28
The problem was, it was anything but normal. So I went to sleep as normal, woke up the next morning. So every morning I meet up with my wife, and we kind of sync on calendars, right? What’s going on with you? What’s happening with me? And that day, she said, wait a minute, something doesn’t sound right. Now, inside of my head, I heard a conversation like we’re having right now. What she heard was gibberish, and so thankfully, friend of hers had a small TIA recently, and so she walked me through the protocol.

Roderick Jefferson 3:01
And she, you know, What’s your middle name? I could remember, count to 10, that’s easy, 1, 2, 12, 27, 58 and then she said, say your ABCs. I was like, You’re kidding, right? She goes, No, say your ABCs, A, B, L, Q, W, X, Y, H, and she said, Go in the bathroom. Look at your face. Is your face drooping? I said, No. She said ‘I need you to call, and I had my team with me, said ‘I need you to call, Tim, you’re having a stroke.

Roderick Jefferson 3:32
They rushed me over to the emergency room, they do the protocol, unfortunately, it was too late for me to give the shot to break up the clot, and it turned out that I had a sleep stroke the night before. Now, bear in mind, there’s a 98% fatality rate when that happens, so I am now part, proudly, part of the 2% club, and I’m still here.

Bill Gasiamis 3:57
That’s.

Roderick Jefferson 3:58
That’s where it got interest.

Bill Gasiamis 4:00
Sensational to here, man.

Roderick Jefferson 4:02
Yeah, that’s where it got really. interesting, because I was flying back home that day from LA back up to San Fran. The problem was, when I got in the plane, the cabin pressure and the altitude I passed out. I got off, my wife and son were waiting for me, they rushed me to the emergency room, and I don’t remember the first three days when I was in the hospital, but I remember my wife saying, there was no reason he should be alive with that altitude and also cabin pressure, I don’t know how he’s still alive.

Bill Gasiamis 4:37
How do you get your head around that? Okay, so, you know, I’ll give you a little bit of a I’ll try and set the scene. Some people, they get into a car, they have a near miss. Do they take it as if they’ve already had the car? Lesion. They lose their marbles against the other person. It can become like a massive thing. Others people have a other people have a near miss, and they go ‘Oh, we missed everything’s all good. How do you go through those motions of trying to wrap your head around this near-miss, and the fact that you and I were talking about this right now?

Roderick Jefferson 4:50
I think if it would have just been that being the near-miss Bill, I would have been okay-okay, things are happening. I’m at a high level of stress, I know what’s going on, but when I got back to actually being clear headed somewhat again. I now stuttered aphasia, really bad, I was having a hard time focusing my eyes, I couldn’t remember what had even happened and that I was even on a business trip, and so then one night, my wife was and it was during covid, so my kids couldn’t see me.

Roderick Jefferson 6:02
All they saw was, you know FaceTime. My wife’s going home, and she’s crying. Like, is, take me, like, two hours to get a sentence out right? Like ‘babe, what’s wrong? And she said ‘I’m going home, and I don’t think I’m ever going to see you alive again. I was bad, really bad, because I was progressively getting worse and worse and worse, they now have me on full blown oxygen, I’m having a difficult time swallowing, and then that night, I hear Code Blue, and machines start going off, and everyone’s running into my room.

The Out-of-Body Experience

Roderick Jefferson 6:38
Now suddenly I go from Beep, beep, beep, beep, really fast, dude, beeeeep, I’m flatlined, I’m dead. Wasn’t near death, I was flatlined. So I float up to the corner of the room, I’m looking down on the doctors and nurses, they’re pulling fluids out of me, they’re doing chest compression, and I look to my left, and it’s my mom. My mom died in 1999 so now I’m not scared. I’m actually oddly at peace like I’d never felt before, I wear these glasses because, you know, getting gray and catching up in years.

Roderick Jefferson 7:17
I can’t see without these things on, I didn’t have them on that day, but I saw the most vibrant blues and greens and oranges and yellows, and I said to my mom ‘Okay, Mama, I guess I’ve done everything that I can, I’m ready to go. And she looks at me, and I remember exactly what she said. She said ‘No, baby, I was sent to tell you that you’re going to be okay and they’re going to figure this out. Now I’m sucked back into my body. I’m lying flat on my back, my chest is killing me because of the chest compressions, and she’s gone.

Roderick Jefferson 7:52
Now I’m still flatlined, but I can hear muddled, you know, kind of whispering and mumbling going on with the doctors, and they’re all trying to and suddenly I hear the one word that no one ever wants to hear Bill ‘Clear. I went ‘Oh no, this is not going to be good. Now bear in mind, I’m still flatlined at this time, but I can hear things, and it was kind of like when you go to the dentist and they give you twilight, where you’re not all the way out, but you’re really not there either.

Roderick Jefferson 8:24
That’s how it felt, and so he yells clear, and I can hear, it sounds like sandpaper, and he’s rubbing the paddles together. Now he’s coming down to shock me, and suddenly I go from beep to beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, I’m back now. I’m literally in the room, I can see everyone, everything goes ‘What’s going on? He’s coming down to me. I grab one of his hands before he gets to me and shocks me, I still can’t talk, but at least I have enough, you know, grip, to grab him, and from there, now that I’m back, they went into a whole different protocol, like I’ve never seen.

Roderick Jefferson 9:02
So I know it’s a long time explaining. Now I’ll answer your question. How’d I get my arms around it? Um, there were a couple things that happened. One was I was still somewhat incapacitated, but when I could finally clear, I remember I prayed the same thing every single night, not may I get better? Can I get to this? Can I do that? I prayed, God just let me wake up tomorrow.

Roderick Jefferson 9:31
And from there, it changed, as I started to come back, speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, the whole nine. I’ve got 10 different neurologists, and they’re checking on me right? And it turns out that it has changed my entire life, and it’s my four F’s, Faith, Family, Friends and Fun, everything else doesn’t even hit my radar anymore. The way I think, the way I approach things, my level of temper, everything has changed from that day because I was brought back for what reason? I couldn’t figure it out, and I’ve given up on trying to figure out.

Bill Gasiamis 10:09
Let’s take a quick pause here, but we’ll be right back with more of Roderick Jefferson’s powerful story before we continue, I want to remind you about my book ‘The unexpected way that a stroke became the best thing that happened. It’s filled with practical guidance and inspirational stories of stroke survivors who turned their adversity into an opportunity for growth, you can find it on Amazon or at recoveryafterstroke.com/book.

Roderick Jefferson 10:36
All I know is I am here to now share that story and also help others that they may not go through what I went through. And what I mean is having to learn how to use a spoon again, how to tie my shoes, how to button my buttons, all those things that we just take for granted, I don’t take anything for granted, we always say tomorrow’s not promised until you’re in a position where you really don’t have it tomorrow and you realize how amazing it is to walk across the room to the kitchen, to walk to the bathroom on your own, to be able to do what you do.

Roderick Jefferson 11:14
The worst part is by trade. I’m a keynote speaker. Imagine what that did to me, I stuttered so bad that I literally stopped talking, I went snow blind, I lost sight in my eyes, I lost the use of my left arm and my left leg. Had to work through all of that, and I am incredibly blessed to still be here. And like I said, I don’t even try and figure out why anymore, I just appreciate the fact that I’m here.

Bill Gasiamis 11:42
Wow, man, I love it. So you didn’t have the near-miss, you actually had the collision, and then you’re dealing with the aftermath and that whole floating above yourself and looking down and paying attention to what’s happening, and seeing your mom, and all those things we hear about people talking about that regularly, you hear about that you can never. You can never what’s the word? Relate to it, you can never understand it, you have to take those people for their word, and they’ve got no reason to be lying, but then.

Roderick Jefferson 12:23
You can’t make that up, no one’s that creative.

Bill Gasiamis 12:23
And then you experience it, and then it’s back into the world, and now, from that state of euphoria, seeing your mom being guided, now you’re back to Earth, and now you have to get through it well, not on your own, but without the spiritual connection from Mum, the way that she was to bring you back from where you were. So now you’re back, and now it’s still covid, and you’ve come you’ve come around, and they’ve kept you alive. So then what happens? Then, like, how do you navigate the next part of that awake time?

Dealing With The Deficits From Ischemic Stroke Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Roderick Jefferson 13:07
Well, the next part was all about, how do we now start getting the use of my faculties again? So I’m in the hospital for an extended stay now I go home and I’m still stuttering really bad, and still having a difficult time seeing, still not fully using all of my limbs. I remember it was a Saturday, matter of fact, it was November 20, because it was my son’s birthday the next day, and we were watching, listening my case, to an American football game, and I just got the worst sharp pain in my head I’ve ever.

Roderick Jefferson 13:48
Felt like someone was driving nails into my head, and I was screaming and literally on the ground crying that it was in pain so bad. I’m a big guy, 64-65, right? I was in a fetal position, then all of a sudden, it felt like a wave hit me of energy. I look up at my wife and my daughter, and I can see her, first of all, and I said ‘It’s clear as you’re hearing me right now, I’m not sure what happened, but I feel like myself again.

Roderick Jefferson 14:26
Where’d that come from? So they rushed me back to the emergency room, thinking maybe an aneurysm had burst, or something’s going on in my brain, and they took me back to the same hospital that I was just in because we wanted to get film of now post versus what I look like when I was in the hospital, they took them and they superimposed them on top of each other, they were carbon copy. So physically, nothing changed in my brain, but somewhere in the depths of it, my aphasia was gone, there was no stutter, I was able to move around again.

Roderick Jefferson 15:05
So I now am writing a new book called ‘The Miracle Man,and telling the entire piece. But now where it all started was twofold, I was an executive in corporate and traveling a lot, moving around high level of stress, and I became comfortable at that red line level of stress, and then it turns out that I have something called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, where the normal heart squeezes. Now no blockage bear in mind, but the normal heart squeezes at about 55% to 65% when it gets down to 20% to 20% cardiac arrest, you’re gone.

Roderick Jefferson 15:47
That day when they rushed me into the hospital, I was at 22% of heart function after I got off that plane, I don’t try and figure out why me? Why did it happen to me? Why am I able to bounce back? I just roll with it. And again I have a whole I’ll call it a fixation, an addiction, almost to being able to help others not get to this level, and for those that are there to know that you can get through it. Now, I was in a bunch of support groups online that I had to drop out of because I started getting survivor’s guilt.

Roderick Jefferson 16:25
These are people two years later ‘Hey, I just used a spoon for the first time, I just walked 10 steps. And for me, I was like ‘I’m about to get on a flight and go to Amsterdam and do a keynote speech. Right? Now, on the plane, that’s when the survivor’s guilt kicks in lik ‘Okay, these people are far worse than me, because when you think stroke, you think Stroke-Stroke, they may never bounce back, they may never get back.

Roderick Jefferson 16:51
For me, it was about six months, and I felt like I was probably 90% back. But also bear in mind, I take 14 to 16 pills per day of medication just to stay balanced, I don’t take those, I don’t sound like the guy that you’re talking to right now.

The Survivor’s Guilt

Bill Gasiamis 17:13
Okay, let’s talk about the survivor’s guilt. So I experienced that, and it’s a common thing, you hear a lot of stroke survivors talk about that when you experience survivor’s guilt, like, what are you guilty of? What is the underlying emotion that you’re grappling with? For me, it was, Why am I so special? Why did I survive and they didn’t? Or why did I get away with the way that I did? I’m still living with deficits, but why? Why are mine? We’ll call it on a lower scale of deficit compared to other people.

Bill Gasiamis 17:54
And there was a lot of why questions, like, it was, Why me? But not why me? Why did this happen to me? Poor me. It was the other why me, which seems like it’s a it’s a positive questioning of the experience, so that I can then transform it into something beyond a bad experience, and like you make something out of it, like use it as a as a springboard to something else, something better. What’s your version of the survivor’s guilt-like?

Roderick Jefferson 18:32
Dude you’re spot on, It was never poor me, why did it happen? Why’d I have to go through this? Why’d I have to fight through it? It was, Why was I the chosen one? Why are these people still struggling and realistically? May never get back to quote, unquote, normal, if you will. It was also, how did it happen so fast? Now you would think someone that that has a spiritual background and relationship, that I prayed my prayers were answered.

Roderick Jefferson 19:02
‘Okay, great, now that should have been a phenomenal testimony, if nothing else, to be able to go out and tell the world that I don’t have to, whether it’s God, a higher be, or whatever it is that you believe in, to go out and put that story out, which I was doing, don’t get me wrong, but it was kind of half hearted at first, because it was yes that did happen. Yes, it did validate that there’s a higher being. Yes, I was spared. But then there’s also the rational side of humans, of ‘Why me? Right?

Roderick Jefferson 19:35
And again, I had to drop out of the the support groups, because I was healing at such a rapid pace that I actually was put into a study here at Stanford University with 11 different neurologists that had never seen it move as fast as far as I had done again, something else to your point, you would feel like should be positive, I was finding a hard time finding the positive, I was positive that I’m still alive and happy and thankful, but I could not rationalize ‘What’s so special about why me? and why are those poor people? And I didn’t mean this negatively or talking down.

Roderick Jefferson 20:18
It was, why are these poor people going through such a difficult, extended, elongated, and in some cases, lifelong, these people are never going to get back to what they were before and not I won’t even say normal, just where they were, where in this conversation with you and I, and I’m sure you’ve heard the same thing, people say you had a stroke. I would never know if you didn’t tell me, and then, in the mind, you kind of go ‘Why? Why me? I don’t want to give it back. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not tempting fate, but it’s something where, rationally, there’s really no explanation.

Bill Gasiamis 20:18
Well for me.

Roderick Jefferson 20:20
You feel the same?

Bill Gasiamis 20:21
I did, I had all of that, and this is where it’s evolved for me a little bit, and the guilt was, you’re not doing enough, you’re not doing enough, you’re doing you’re half assing it. You could be doing more and in a constructive way, in that a friend of mine, the podcast exists because a friend of mine put it in my head that planted a seed like because I was doing a lot of research to find out how I’m going to heal quickly, how I’m going to get better I’m going to get back to life.

Bill Gasiamis 21:41
How I’m going to recover my cognitive function and my ability to type and write and participate in life? Right? So I just My life’s completely different, I changed everything about the Bill that existed before, all that stuff, and then he kind of planted that seed is you’ve learnt a lot. He said ‘What do you know about stroke? And I could talk for hours about, what do I know for stroke? About stroke? What do I know about recovery? What do I know about mindset? Emotions?

Roderick Jefferson 22:13
What’s an ischemic? What’s a hemorrhagic? I’m sure maybe you don’t understand exactly what’s going on.

Bill Gasiamis 22:20
You name it, right? And then I said to him ‘Well, I’d like to share that with people and coach people get through it. You know? And it whenever, even when I said that, I said it to the point of, I’m going to do it one on one with people in my local area, and he said to me, like, one on one ‘How many people are you going to reach like that? And I said ‘I don’t know, I don’t know how many people there are in my area that need that kind of support. He said ‘You know, there’s this thing called the internet, you know, you could do it online.

Roderick Jefferson 22:49
Really big, it’s going to catch on one day, Bill, it’s going to take off.

Bill Gasiamis 22:52
Yeah, and I’m thinking ‘I can’t see that, I can’t. I can’t visualize how that could possibly be a thing, but I just accepted what he said and just took it on face value, and we had the conversation, and the conversation ended, but that planting of the seed and then that feeling of you’re not doing enough ‘Why me? Why did I make it? Combined somewhere they kind of merged, and then the result was ‘Okay, you need to do this online, you need to create a podcast, you need to work out what the name of that podcast is.

Bill Gasiamis 23:26
You need to work out who your audience is, and you need to do that every single week. And that’s kind of now ‘The Why-me kind of now makes sense. It’s like ‘Ah, that’s why me, because I was supposed to do this, get through it, learn from it, share the learning, and then put it out there on a global scale, so people can download it on the internet, audio, video, transcribe it, so that everyone can get their hands on it. And then, when you when that idea of stroke becoming the best thing that happened to me enters your head.

Bill Gasiamis 24:10
What the next thing is that you have to do is you have to actually write the book about it. And when I reflect back on those 12 years that I’ve been through this journey so far, all that seemed to come very quickly on reflection. It’s like going going through childbirth for a woman, you know, my wife, would say, at the beginning, she said, I’m never going through that again.

Bill Gasiamis 24:31
Quickly, she forgets about how hard it was. All of a sudden, three and a half years later, we’re pregnant again, and then you go through it again. It’s painful again, and it’s like ‘Oh, this is how hard it was, Oh, that’s why we didn’t want to do it again, but we did it anyway, and now that’s what the book was. The book was a very difficult thing to do, now that I reflect on it, man, that was such a great experience. The podcast was seriously hard to start, and now the I’ve got momentum and a system in place, it’s really easy to do record an episode and get it up and running.

Bill Gasiamis 25:05
So it’s like, that’s why me, that’s why, because I had to find a way to reach these people that was beyond, beyond my capabilities and my skills in the past, and as a result of that, the guilt the survivors part, the guilt of that has dissipated, and it’s now I’m on purpose. I found the the meaning in my life, and I and I’ve transformed this whole experience from being something that happened to me to something that I all I do is I reflect on it as a something that I’ve experienced, but it’s not traumatizing me on a daily basis.

Bill Gasiamis 25:48
I see it in the past, and now, the stuff that I’m doing is kind of guiding people at the next level so that they can move beyond where they are, and I don’t know how long it’ll take for them. So what I’m doing is going, you know, just go on the ride, and as hard as it is, reflect back every once in a while to see how far you’ve come, so that you can get a little bit of it, so that, so that you can feel empowered to take the next hard journey, because there’s more hard journeys to come.

Roderick Jefferson 26:27
First of all, thank you for your ‘Why, and thank you for keeping this alive and sharing it with the world and starting the podcast and writing the book. Because to your point, there are a lot of people that you’re you’re going to touch, that you’ll never meet, but you may be the motivating thing that pushes them over the top. Maybe that’s your why is you’re supposed to be that conduit to show others what success looks like, and I don’t mean professionally or monetarily, like we always look at success.

Roderick Jefferson 26:59
But literally, the fact that you were back as close to quote, unquote normal Bill as you were before stroke, that’s tough though, because again, if you are the anomaly, are we giving people hope that they may never get to? Or is it really the folks like you and I that do get back and we show them, and we show them a level of determination and grit and persistency and drive that they may never had, and either way, I think it’s a huge upside, I really do. I have a question for you after your stroke?

Dealing With Emotions After The Ischemic Stroke Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Roderick Jefferson 27:41
First of all, where was your stroke located? And secondly, after it was over, did you have any difference in emotions afterwards? Because I know for me, every time I said I had a stroke, I broke into tears. I’m not a big I have no problem with crying, but it took me over and consumed me, because mine was in my speech center, which is right next to the emotion center. So your story I’d love to hear.

Bill Gasiamis 28:11
So, I had a hemorrhagic stroke a faulty blood vessel. It was four centimeters, about one and a half, two inches from the from the ear into the middle of the brain, near the cerebellum. So it kind of affects your balance area. And in order for them to get to it, when they operated, they had to kind of move out, out of the way all the other parts of the brain, so they’ve interfered with a fair amount of it to get into there. When I woke up, I had numbness on my left side after surgery, and that has never gone away.

Bill Gasiamis 28:44
That was that’s been there since 2014 and that was the main symptom when I realized that I needed to be in hospital, that was the main symptom that I was experiencing in total left side numbness. So the initial experience with the numbness came because I had a blood vessel burst and the and the clot in my head was initially small, probably about the size of a dime, so they’re able to settle it down, but then, as it bled a second time.

Bill Gasiamis 29:15
The amount of blood was about the size of a golf ball and sitting there in impacting all of those areas that you can imagine a blood clot that big would impact. So, that made me emotional, it made me angry ,it made me all over the place, and it impacted my cognition, my ability to remember things, to write, to focus, to begin and start a sentence, a whole bunch of stuff kind of went really really wrong. And then as other things sort of started to come back online, when the clock, because the clock was in there for about two and a half years, but forever decreasing in size.

Bill Gasiamis 30:00
Because it’s being absorbed and broken up by the body, and as it’s decreasing in size, more and more of my functions are coming back on, but the emotional part was still a little bit off, and I would find myself in a situation where I would be on stage for the Stroke Foundation, having to talk about my condition, so that I can set the scene, so that I can talk to the to the audience about how to prevent stroke. And then as soon as I mentioned, you know, there was a keyword that might come up out of nowhere that I mentioned, I would burst into tears.

Bill Gasiamis 30:34
And there was no controlling it like previously, where you could, you know, you could, you know, change your face, and you could breathe differently or whatever, and you could stop it from happening, and then it continued happening, and to this day, it still continues to happen. So now we’re talking about 12 years later. I did the book launch a few, a few months ago, and I had a presentation in front of about 35 people where I was going to talk about my journey, how the book came to be, etc, around about a 20 minute speech, I cried four times.

Roderick Jefferson 31:12
Wow!

Intro 31:12
If you’ve had a stroke and you’re in recovery, you’ll know what a scary and confusing time it can be. You’re likely to have a lot of questions going through your mind, like, how long will it take to recover? Will I actually recover? What things should I avoid in case I make matters worse? Doctors will explain things, but obviously you’ve never had a stroke before, you probably don’t know what questions to ask. If this is you, you may be missing out on doing things that could help speed up your recovery.

Intro 31:42
If you’re finding yourself in that situation, stop worrying and head to recoveryafterstroke.com. Where you can download a guide that will help you. It’s called ‘Seven questions to ask your doctor about your stroke. These seven questions are the ones Bill wished he’d asked when he was recovering from a stroke, they’ll not only help you better understand your condition, they’ll help you take a more active role in your recovery. Head to the website now recoveryafterstroke.com, and download the guide. It’s free.

Bill Gasiamis 32:12
And it was so difficult to not cry, but I’ve accepted the fact that it happens, and when I do cry in that context, like it sucks the audience in even further.

Roderick Jefferson 32:27
Yeah, it’s crazy how that works, is it?

Bill Gasiamis 32:29
I have them in the palm of my hands.

Roderick Jefferson 32:30
Everybody’s on your journey, and they’re on the edge of their seats, and they’re they’re feeling sympathy and empathetic for you, and you’re like ‘If only I was good enough that I could have been here crying on demand, but that’s not what happened.

Bill Gasiamis 32:44
Not at all, right? And then, and then what happens is you get the message across. It’s more powerful, you know, really makes people sort of sit up and pay attention to the the the impactful nature of that, and part of the reason why I cried was because I can’t contain my excitement for being there, my excitement for people being in the room, my joy for being alive, I can’t contain my emotions because the journey that got me to a book launch has been so hard, arduous, difficult obstacles to overcome, and I’ve overcome them all, and still, there’s more to overcome.

Bill Gasiamis 33:27
And it’s like, I don’t know how to deal with all of that stuff, and I don’t know how Bill, the guy that I know before stroke, how that guy has found that within himself to get through all of that and be in that place, in that room, on that day after everything that he’s been through, I do not know those two people. They are two different people, and it’s overwhelming, overwhelming in a good way. So does that make you feel a little more?

Roderick Jefferson 34:06
Thank you for not feeling like I’m the only one going through this, right? And I’m sure there are a ton of us, but the similarities especially because we had two different types of strokes. Mine was ischemic, where the night, while I was asleep, as I said, a clot created in my heart floated up to my brain, lodged in the center of my speech center, and it just kind of went haywire and shut things down.

Roderick Jefferson 34:33
But the fact that we have a similar path, thank you for sharing that, because it definitely does give me an opportunity to see it through your lenses, and we’re seeing the same things, just from different angles. And so I was always wondering, Am I the only one going through this? Right there is and then I go to the stroke I go to Stroke Association to go and try and help, to speak for free, go and give back, I got nothing back from them, it was almost like we don’t want you to come help ‘We just want you to donate. And that infuriated me.

The Pseudobulbar Affect

Bill Gasiamis 35:16
Okay, cool, right? So I get that a little bit too, right? And I’ll tell you my version of that. So firstly, you need to know there is a term for what we the emotional outbursts that we experience. It’s Psuedobulbar affect. It is very well documented, and people with neurological injuries experience it a lot. So Psuedobulbar affect, some people will have the crying version of it.

Bill Gasiamis 35:42
Some people will have the laughing version of that, where they laugh at in at times where it’s not appropriate. And it might be.

Roderick Jefferson 35:51
Yes, I didn’t get that.

Bill Gasiamis 35:52
Yeah, and it might be, even I’ve met people who have will cry at a funeral and sorry, will laugh at a funeral when they’re not meant to be laughing, but it’s that crazy outburst that they can’t control, so they have to make themselves scarce, they’ve gotta get out of there.

Roderick Jefferson 36:12
I think I’ll take the the crying type, I’m okay with that now.

Bill Gasiamis 36:17
It’s more endearing. So, there’s that now, with regards to the Stroke Foundation here in Australia, again, I’ve donated my likeness, I’ve been in TV ads, posters on the back of busses, they still have a online campaign where they use me as the face of the fast campaign, I presented for them, volunteered my time to present for them in the space of raising awareness about how to prevent stroke and how to recognize a stroke. Really cool things, right? All those things, but the challenge is that they are funded partly by the government.

Bill Gasiamis 37:06
And on the other side, they are funded by private donors, and their mandate is to run a scientific approach to preventing stroke, and that’s their biggest mandate. The other parts of stroke they’re not interested in, because they’re not funded to do that kind of work. So if I turned up and presented myself as somebody who would like to speak on their behalf, about my story that benefits them and me, and I requested payment or money for that, they wouldn’t be up for it.

Bill Gasiamis 37:50
I started my journey there, and then kind of found myself going, well, I could do all this on my own, I could, instead of run, put my time and effort into their organization who doesn’t have a mandate to support somebody like me, I could do this for myself in that and then not have to work within a mandate that doesn’t suit my desire and how I would go about presenting this now I’ve done 300 and nearly 10 episodes, something like that of a podcast.

Bill Gasiamis 38:31
If I was doing that for the Stroke Foundation, could you imagine what an amazing resource that would create for the Stroke Foundation, and they kind of have these little peripheral programs that they get a small amount of funding to create, but then the funding ends, and then they can’t continue it, so they’re very restricted with how they go about that. The next part for me is I wrote the book, and then I applied in a scientific way, I applied to present on my thesis. We’ll call the book a ‘Thesis’ for this particular scenario.

Bill Gasiamis 39:09
Which was the study that I did that found the 10 steps that people took that made them arrive to the point of saying stroke was the best thing that happened to them and that application that I put in was for the smart strokes conference, which is coming up in about two and a half weeks, and I was accepted to speak at the conference, It’s in Australia, it’s the smart strokes conference. A whole bunch of clinicians get together and they talk shop, and I’ll be there presenting my thesis for 12 minutes.

Bill Gasiamis 39:46
The idea, what I thought of how I developed the story, where I found my participants, what the outcomes were, the methodology I used, the conclusion, how they might be able to apply it in their clinics from now on, and then I’ll invite people to collaborate if they need to or want to see that is what I wanted to do for the Stroke Foundation, but they don’t have the mandate to do that. So here I am now in 12 minutes, I’m going to get to speak to, hopefully, hundreds of people who are specifically my audience.

Bill Gasiamis 40:23
I’m going to be able to potentially create a new conversation about how we can take this further. So from your perspective, because you’re already an accomplished speaker, you have a platform that you could use at some in some way in the future that you can add to your your toolkit this particular presentation that you feel is important for people to become aware of, with regards to stroke specifically, or the ideas around recovery From a stroke, like resilience, leadership.

Roderick Jefferson 41:02
That’s how I’m messaging and positioning it now, the resiliency and the determination and grit, those kind of things. But I love the fact that you figured out a way to message and position this to the medical community that mattered enough to them to give you a platform that you can now leverage outside of their world and inside of their world. I mean, you’ve got, what, 12 minutes you said. You’ve essentially got the equivalent of a TED talk with a live audience and Q&A That’s amazing. That’s ultimate goal, to do what you’re doing right now.

Bill Gasiamis 41:44
Yes, so I’m still fulfilling my desire to want to help. This will still, perhaps there’ll be Stroke Foundation people in that room, so they may not be the specific organization I’m representing, and that’s okay, but I’m still representing the stroke community, and that’s really what it was about. It was about, how do I do it? Still, even though these guys can’t, because of their mandate and the way they’re funded, can’t support somebody like me who has these types of desires.

Bill Gasiamis 42:18
So it’s great if they contact me and say ‘Can we use your likeness again? Or can we? Yep, I’m up for that, no problem, we can do that, I’m happy to be that guy. It’s not like they don’t remunerate you, they do, but on a very small scale, right? So it’s just to say thank you, and I appreciate that and that’s great, right? So from here on what I don’t know. And this is the beautiful part Roderick, is I don’t know what’s going to happen when I get to that end of that presentation, and that’s the part that really excites me, right?

Roderick Jefferson 42:54
That’s amazing, because you’re getting to fulfill your need of giving back right, to that guilt survivor, you get a chance to help kind of squelch and put that one to bed. And at the same time, you get a chance to help the medical community, really at a deeper level, personally, to understand what we are.

Roderick Jefferson 43:16
Now, here’s the piece that you really hit on, that struck with me, and that is, then what you never know who’s going to be in that room or that’s going to see that recording that propels you, your messaging and our entire stroke community to a whole other level. That has to be incredibly exciting.

Bill Gasiamis 43:39
It is the most energized I’ve ever felt. You know, it’s if I’m not working on it, it’s working on me. Why aren’t you working on me? Why aren’t you present? What aren’t you doing? You know? And it’s like, it’s always in my mind, I cannot escape, escape it. And in in a really good way, it’s like, oh, here’s a new idea for you that you didn’t think of five minutes ago. Write that down, act on that later. So it’s very it’s a very beautiful kind of, like organic.

Roderick Jefferson 44:15
It has to be somewhat cathartic and rejuvenating, but at the same time therapeutic and healing for you too. No?

Bill Gasiamis 44:25
It’s so much, it was a selfish pursuit, all of this stuff was selfish because I did it for me at the beginning, and then it was cathartic and therapeutic. And then I realized ‘Oh, this is way better than helping just me, because it’s also helping them. and that made the that just me thing much, much better. Because if I’m being selfish and doing it for me, and the result is somebody else gets something positive out of it, then it’s not really that bad-selfish, it’s not really that self centered, ridiculous, crazy one that you feel bad about.

Bill Gasiamis 45:04
It’s the one that you think I’m going to keep doing this because other people send me emails, they comment on my YouTube videos, they send me Instagram notifications. Everyone is reaching out and going, thank you for that episode. I love that chat. I really relate to that, and it’s like ‘Oh, I never knew that, that’s a bonus. Thank you.

Changing Lives After Ischemic Stroke Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Roderick Jefferson 45:24
Well, it part of it has to be self care now, right? It’s no longer selfish. It’s now self care, but at the same time it is you’ve learned to ‘Give, to give, as I put it, right. It’s not about you at all, you’re just a conduit to be able to help others that you may never, ever know, ever see, even exist, but it’s the impact of all of that struggle that we both had to go through that now could change someone else’s a number of people’s lives, especially with, you know, that thing called the internet that’s going to be big one day, right? You never know who globally you’re touching.

Roderick Jefferson 46:10
This isn’t just a regional thing, you’re not just doing this in a room in Australia with, you know, a finite number of people in the room. No, when you get that footage and it goes out on your YouTube and IG and all your social media there.,I firmly believe, and I do the same thing with my YouTube and IG pieces, I’m starting to put more and more of it out, and I firmly believe that somebody is watching those and being inspired to get better, I don’t know if they’re going to get well, at least, to get better.

Bill Gasiamis 46:46
Just aim for better and then see what happens. Now I’m going to go back and I’m going to comment on something that you said a bit earlier. You know, the whole issue of you and I, quote, unquote, appearing normal like it never happened, people seeing the recovery and thinking that’s what stroke looks like. I know people have had a stroke. They look fantastic, they they back to work, they do all this stuff, right? So I struggled with the title of my book ‘The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened.

Bill Gasiamis 47:17
The first comment I made on YouTube about it, where I was promoting the book, holding it up and promoting it, somebody had a negative response, and the response was, how could you be promoting stroke as something worth experiencing and how amazing it was? And it’s like.

Roderick Jefferson 47:34
It’s amazing now.

Bill Gasiamis 47:36
Clearly I’m not promoting stroke. What I’m saying is that the post-traumatic growth is the part of the journey that you are going to be grateful for experiencing. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be challenging, it’s going to make you cry, want to curl up, it’s going to be something you want to walk away from, you’re going to have to it’s going to be emotional, it’s going to be mentally difficult, physically difficult, but if you face those challenges, you will succeed in having post traumatic growth, some kind of positive outcome from facing those challenges.

Bill Gasiamis 48:20
And that is what your story and my story is about. It’s not about having people compare themselves to us and say ‘Well, it’s easy for you to say, Roderick, because look at you. It’s about saying that as bad as your situation is, everything can be improved, and if your mindset is that it can’t that’s the outcome that you’re going to get. But if you believe that you can improve something, and your mindset is one of a growth mindset, rather than a stuck mindset or a fixed mindset.

Bill Gasiamis 48:54
Then you’re going to experience a positive outcome, and if you don’t know, if you haven’t got the skill to focus on what’s good about this, then you’re going to be forever stuck in what’s shit about this, and that’s not a place you want to be.

Roderick Jefferson 49:09
Yeah, and we can only lead them to water. We can’t make them drink, right? And they’re never going to understand how we feel. And regardless of what is, I always say things to people, whether it’s death, whether it’s, you know, strokes, whatever it may be, I don’t know how you feel Bill, but I damn sure know how it feels. And so if I can turn that into again, someone that knows that or believes and starts to execute move forward on better, not well, but better. And you know what? I now understand my purpose for still being here, and I truly believe that is my ‘Why me.

Roderick Jefferson 49:59
We’re talking about with the survivor’s guilt of, why am I still here? I think it’s literally not to motivate but to really show others that it’s not just possible, it’s probable, it may not get back to the level where I am. To your point, don’t compare, right? My chapter 20 may be your chapter two, you never know, or you may be at chapter 20, and it’s just where you’re going to be. But incrementally, if you can see even the smallest of forward movement, to me that’s still progress.

Roderick Jefferson 50:41
And progress means a whole lot of different things, because every stroke is different to your to your point. People see us and we go, I’d never know, yeah, I always say, because I had a stroke, the people that never get back, they had a stroke, stroke, and that’s not to minimize what has happened to you and I, just the fact that there are tears and levels of strokes.

Bill Gasiamis 51:05
Yeah, I feel like part of my journey, also Rodrick is to just tell people about concepts that they may never, have never heard of before, like.

Roderick Jefferson 51:16
You’re a different phase of stroke now.

Bill Gasiamis 51:18
Yeah, like, if I just say, like, the post traumatic growth as a concept. Anyone heard of that before? Well, if you haven’t, you better start looking into that, because you need to know about it, right? So you can recognize it when it’s happening to you. What about Psuedobulbar affect? Well, you’ve never heard about that, well now you’ve heard about it.

Bill Gasiamis 51:39
That might make you feel a little better, and you can explain it to your family, who feel uncomfortable when they say a six foot four Man Mountain start crying in front of them and, you know, curling up in a ball. You can explain it, and that’s the reason that could be part of our journey is just to tell you about concepts you never knew about before, so that you can be more informed.

Roderick Jefferson 52:02
Think you’re under something, I think there may be another piece that just hit me while we were talking. We may be a new look and a new face of stroke, where you don’t think just stroke, stroke, right? It’s kind of like heart attacks. At one point, heart attack, you’re gone. Now, people have had heart attacks and gone back to semi normal lives. I think we’re able to show that as well and change the mindset of what stroke looks like and what stroke can look like, it’s not just full debilitation or you’re in a bed or you’re in a wheelchair, it’s also no back to semi normally function.

Roderick Jefferson 52:47
Like I said, I need those 16 pills to keep me, quote, unquote normal. But thankfully, it’s there, and it keeps me, and I don’t even say forward, keeps me balanced, because there’s been times where you know you’re busy, you miss your round of meds, I now know what that guy looks like, and then, by the way, it’s right below the surface, it’s not like he’s gone completely. He’s right below the surface, and without that balance, kind of like any other med, right, whether it be diabetes or by or bipolar or whatever, what the med does is it doesn’t take it away, it just gives you balance.

Roderick Jefferson 53:30
You take that away and that same blubbering, crying, stuttering, deep and aphasia guy comes back. I don’t want to see that guy if I don’t have to, it was the most difficult and the best thing that ever happened to me, because mine. Now, let’s go away from the neurologist. Now, this is my second stroke, I had a stroke five years prior, small on the other side, so I’ve had one on both sides now, my neurologist was talking to my cardiologist.

Roderick Jefferson 54:06
As we were doing a consult, my cardiologist said, then I remember it was over, he said ‘Thank God you had that stroke, or you would have been. And I had it october 28 ‘You would have been dead before Thanksgiving in September. Because it now brought up the heart issue because of the stroke, because that’s what caused it. Now, it shifted the focus. I was a healthy guy, I thought, I have a whole different definition and perspective of healthy these days, right? And I realized everybody’s going through something. My daughter has an autoimmune deficiency.

Roderick Jefferson 54:52
You look at her, you’d never see it like with us, we don’t walk around with a snap on our forehead that said, I have a I had a stroke that’s flashing you. But I guarantee you, if either of us parked in a handy spot and we got out of that car, people are looking at us like, seriously, guy, that’s the only place you could apply. Wait, where’d you get the placard from? How much did it cost you? And I’m looking at you going, you understand what’s bubbling underneath the surface. So what it did for me was gave me a whole different level of empathy for people.

Bill Gasiamis 55:25
Yes, yes.

Roderick Jefferson 55:26
I don’t assume anything, because you don’t know what they’re dealing, what they’re going through, or what it took to look like the person in front of you, maybe they’re taking 16 pills. Who knows?

Developing Empathy After The Ischemic Stroke Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Bill Gasiamis 55:41
Yeah, and then and then some maybe, you know, it’s empathy is a really cool thing to come from this as well. I’ve said it before on this podcast, I used to see people in wheelchairs and think they were just sitting down. I mean, what an idiot.

Roderick Jefferson 55:58
Never thought that one. No, clearly pre-stroke Bill was a different guy.

Bill Gasiamis 56:05
The guy was an idiot. He was so unaware of things, you know, you never once considered the emotional struggle that that person went through, why they were in a wheelchair, what happened to them, the trauma of say, the injury or like, there was just zero concept. And partly it wasn’t my fault, because I never experienced the life of somebody like that, but also I never knew anyone like that, so it was impossible for me to gain an understanding in an area that I had no connection with, right?

Bill Gasiamis 56:40
And the first time I realized what that was like was when I ended up in a wheelchair and I couldn’t use my legs for a month, like I know now what that means, and how difficult it was to wake up from brain surgery and try to get out of bed to go to the toilet, the nurse thinking that she was going to help me, and me collapsing with a fresh patch on my head after brain surgery, literally on the on the tile floor of the ward, and I know, and I know now what that’s like for the people who are in a wheelchair in a different situation.

Bill Gasiamis 57:19
So it’s like, I can’t believe you were that naive, but I was, and that’s not and I’m not now, and that wasn’t my fault, but I was, I was thick, and I’m glad I’m not, and and now I know people, I know More people who are impacted neurologically by stroke, and physically by stroke, and emotionally by stroke. I know more people than anyone, because I’ve interviewed 300 people that are all impacted by stroke. So it’s like, I am not. I’ve stepped up so I’m not that guy anymore, because he was a good guy, but he was just in la la land.

Roderick Jefferson 58:04
Yeah, yeah, and to your point, you never know what someone next to you is going through or has been through, or how much they had to fight just to be wherever you may be and see them that day, and so it makes you go. Life is a lot different now, and it will forever be changed. And I’m certainly on my side, glad that it has been changed, because I thought I was a good guy, but to your point, I didn’t.

Roderick Jefferson 58:39
You know, you don’t know until you know, what sort of the hours were you thinking I had control of my body and I can do whatever I want, and I’m Superman. No, you’re not, you’re just Clark Kent. That’s what you really are, and there’s no phone booth to go change anything. That’s all you are.

Bill Gasiamis 59:01
Wow. And there’s no phone booths at all anymore. They’ve taken them away.

Roderick Jefferson 59:05
Exactly so there are, there is nowhere to go change into Superman. So guess what? You better figure out who Clark Kent is, and start liking and loving that guy and doing something to give back, not just for yourself.

Bill Gasiamis 59:21
What sort of hours were you keeping, and what is the life of a speaker at your level kind of look like? And how does that juggling a young family and a marriage and all that stuff? How was life? What was it like?

Roderick Jefferson 59:40
At that time, I was back in corporate, so I was senior vice president. I was flying all over the world. I’ve got team in different geographies, different time zones. I’m eating badly. I’m constantly stressed. But again, I got to the point to where that red. Line of stress became the norm, and I realized that if you don’t slow down and and people say, were were there warning signs? Yeah, the first mini stroke was a warning, but it wasn’t bad enough to make me slow down.

Roderick Jefferson 1:00:15
So I went ‘Eh, okay, I felt kind of bad. Now I can move forward, but the second time it said ‘Hello, do I have your attention now? And when you’re laying there and you can’t move, you have a whole lot of time to listen now. Bear in mind, as keynote speakers, we’re talking all the time during that first I’ll say back to your analogy of baby, that first trimester of stroke, all I could do was listen, because I couldn’t move, and I had those conversations every day with God, and I’m like ‘Okay, you got my attention. I’m here now. But let’s I’m here to listen now.

Roderick Jefferson 1:01:01
At first I would say, let’s talk, and then something say ‘You’re not here to talk, you talked enough, you’re going to listen now, and you didn’t want to slow down. So now you’ve given me no choice, and you learn a lot about yourself introspectively, and it makes you reevaluate every part of your personality, of your whys, of your morals, of your scruples, of everything, because if you got nothing but time to think you’re like man, why was I like this? Why did I do this? Why was that important to me? Why was this not? What impact was I having negatively on other people?

Roderick Jefferson 1:01:44
Because I was either constantly frustrated, stressed or angry. And if I get out of this now, this distilling the if phase, if I get out of this, what do I promise to both God into myself that I’m going to do differently. So not just for the point of getting not getting back to that point, but because I found some really dark spots about myself that I really strongly know I hated, and I said, I’ve gotta clean out the closet that part of me has to die forever. I gotta take that corporate mask off. I’ve gotta be more authentic.

Roderick Jefferson 1:02:31
I’ve gotta allow people to touch you proverbially, right? We don’t want the HR issues, but people to really be close, and you know, as well as I do when we’re on the stage, we’re literally untouchable, because they came to listen, you’re supposed to be the subject matter expert, they’re here to hear what you gotta say. They’re looking to be enlightened, I used to do my keynotes, I’d get off the stage, I would go and sign books and go hide out in my room, because I’d be over stimulated by people.

Roderick Jefferson 1:03:08
Now I make sure that I’m touchable. I come off the stage and I let them know I’m the same guy that was up there that you see in front of you ‘What do you want to talk about? Do you want to go sit down. I used to say, grab a cocktail. Can’t do that anymore, right? And don’t miss it, frankly, but I think what I’ve done now is I’ve learned how to listen better.

Having The Time For Reflection

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:33
Sounds like you didn’t have time for reflection, and therefore, you weren’t able to see what you needed to see to stop doing the things that were impacting you negatively. So then you had this moment where everything stops. You have nothing but time. And now, for the first time in years, you can reflect on what has come before the moment that you’re currently in, and you can critically analyze that and go, Oh man, it makes sense why I’m here ‘Ah, okay, all right, so how do I want to avoid being here again?

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:18
Well, I need to implement some changes. I need to look at the whole experience that I’ve had so far up until the day that I was unwell, and I need to make some changes. That is what I did. It’s exactly what I did, to the extent that what happened to me, Roderick is my brain. I describe it as having completely switched off, and then that enabled my heart to come alive. And I had a moment where I physically noticed something weird happening in my chest, really. And it was just that I became aware that my heart was there, not that I didn’t know that before.

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:58
Not that I didn’t feel it beating or whatever, but it actually came into my awareness in a different way, that it’s like you haven’t been paying attention to me for a long, long time. Your desires have been put on hold, and your your head has been running the show and telling you what the right thing to do is, and it’s not the right thing because you haven’t been happy for ages.

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:28
It’s all about chasing the dollar, and it’s all about working hard as possible and as many hours as possible, and being away from home as long as possible, and you haven’t done the things that I’ve requested of you, and that’s why you’re miserable, and that is not something that we can continue down the road in the future. And that was my second stroke. Was the are you paying attention yet? That was the second incident was, Are you paying attention yet? And since you’re thick and you’re not, or I’m going to make you see.

Bill Gasiamis 1:06:07
And boy, did that make me see. So the third incident, when I had the third bleed about a year and a half later, after the first one, no two or almost two and a half years later, something like that, about two and a half years later, after the first one, the third one was more clinical. It was more like, ah, by the way, I’m still here. I’m still bleeding. You just need to do something about this. Now. There’s business and then when my surgeon came and saw me after after knowing me for two years, she said to me, Well, we’ve been through this two times already.

Bill Gasiamis 1:06:50
This is the third time. It’s unlikely that it’s going to stop bleeding and the risk of you having a catastrophic stroke with this thing not being dealt with has just risen to the point where it’s more dangerous than brain surgery. Do you want to take it out? I was like, Yep, no problem, Yeah, I’m ready to do it. It was a very different experience. The first one was, hey, hey, hey. What about me? Look at me. Look at me. What’s happening? The second one was, you’re not paying attention. And the third one was all about business. Let’s just get this done.

Roderick Jefferson 1:07:29
Yeah, I pray that there’s not a third on this side. And then I sorry to hear you had to go that far, but I think you just really touched something inside of me, and that is, I think, what’s happened now is before that, I would see the world through my ego, and since then, I’m seeing the world through my heart. And that ego has taken a long step back, and now it’s how is this going to hit impact someone else? How can I possibly and and positively help someone else? It’s not a Me-me-me kind of thing.

Roderick Jefferson 1:08:11
And then even someone said to me, and a number of people said we noticed a difference in what you’re posting, even on social media and how you’re positioning these things before. It’s not about you in the book, it’s not about you, and the speaking, it’s everything I put up now is about, how can I help someone else, whether it be about the stroke, or about business or even like and I share a lot more personal stories and anecdotes in just in conversation, than I ever did before, because you have to, if people can’t touch you, you’re not, especially in the world of AI, you’re not real at all.

Roderick Jefferson 1:08:53
And first of all, you’re not being real with yourself. So you could never be completely open to everyone else. I believe that I’ve got a lot more sunsets behind me than sunrises in front of me. I want to maximize every one of them that I have, and I want to know that every day I did something to help somebody else. I may not be able to make your life better, but maybe just a little easier.

Bill Gasiamis 1:09:26
See, and you had that in you because your career, and I’ll speak about your book right now. So Sales Enablement 3.0 the blueprint to sales enablement excellence, right? So your career was deep down, really still always about making other people successful. It was still all about enabling people and organizations to Excel. As selling, so that the company could benefit, so that they could benefit, so that the person buying the product would benefit from the product that they purchased.

Bill Gasiamis 1:10:10
However, seeing, having a career in that space through only the ego is kind of like one, it’s only 1/3 of the actual pie as to how to make a successful interaction when you’re selling something, for example, if you’re just connecting to people via their head, and all the numbers are great, you might be missing the opportunity to connect to somebody via through the heart.

Bill Gasiamis 1:10:39
Which who is more touchy feely, not in the actual physical version of it, but in the way that you know they want to be spoken to or looked at or or encouraged, or you might miss the opportunity to understand what their values are, and that makes a sale not land correctly, and therefore they don’t buy. Like there’s so many different things that you can enhance by going through the heart and adding this additional layer to your bow of the head.

Bill Gasiamis 1:11:12
Version of selling, because that’s a that’s that’s got it worked out, right? But then it’s this, this other part of connecting with people you can’t do it with the head, you can only do it with the heart.

Roderick Jefferson 1:11:23
I describe it as pre-stroke, I was teaching people how to sell post sell. Post-stroke, I’m teaching people how to help.

Bill Gasiamis 1:11:32
Yes.

Roderick Jefferson 1:11:36
Now it doesn’t change the mechanisms, it changes the approach, and it literally took the spotlight off of me. Turn it around, and I now put it on the the sellers and or the prospects or the clients. It’s no more, how do you sell? It’s all about how can I help? And it is so much more fulfilling now than when I was making way more money before, but now I can look in the mirror and say, I don’t just like I love the guy that I see, and not an egotistical way. I love him for what he’s doing for others now.

All Because Of The Ischemic Stroke Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Bill Gasiamis 1:12:26
Yeah, it’s a good place to be, man, it’s a completely different way to completely different way to turn up in the world and to participate in the world and to engage with people. It’s just look and it’s all that’s what I keep coming back to. It’s all possible because of stroke. I mean, it’s just in crazy that it’s all possible because we are able to reflect on things that we wouldn’t have been able to if we didn’t have this thing happen to us. That’s I’m going to be on stage speaking to clinicians for 12 minutes, and then I’m going to have three minutes of Q&A because of the stroke, it just.

Roderick Jefferson 1:13:16
Actually, I think I looked it in a different set of lenses, you’re on stage for 15 minutes because of who the stroke. The stroke has helped you become.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:29
Yes indeed.

Roderick Jefferson 1:13:31
And it’s not to negate what you’re saying. I think it’s more about the guy today, Bill versus pre-stroke. Bill, and they’re going to want to know the why and what changed you, and how do you go through life differently now, where you’re looking at going, it’s just who I am now, yeah, and it’ll be far more authentic that way.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:55
Yeah. So that’s why the book title, you know that’s why, not for any other reason. That’s the only reason why the book title is the book title ‘The unexpected way the stroke became the best thing that happened. I would have rather learnt the lessons in a more different way, but I apparently I couldn’t. So here we are, I’ll take the lessons whichever way they want to come, and that’s I’m okay with that.

Roderick Jefferson 1:14:26
Thankfully you’re still here, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 1:14:29
So tell me about your what the future has in store for you. Like, where are you at with that? How are you seeing yourself participating now, in in your work life, in your home life, and in all the other parts of your life.

Roderick Jefferson 1:14:49
I go back to that word balance, right? I just was blessed with my first grandchild six months ago, little girl and I am enjoying this so much now, one, I’m still here, but I now get a chance to see her mom in her at that age, all over again, but at her mom’s age, I was ladder climbing. I was trying to get to that next level. I was moving to try and get promoted.

Roderick Jefferson 1:15:18
I was trying to get, oh, I have a chance to and and it’s the two words that that I hear all the time in my home, and that is, be present, I have a chance to be present. When I’m talking to people, I try to be more present. Used to be I’d be talking to you and I’m checking my phone, or nah, you have my attention. I have yours. I think I’ve gone from a life of presentations to a life of conversations, and I’m loving it right now.

Bill Gasiamis 1:15:59
That’s a pretty profound switch.

Roderick Jefferson 1:16:03
Just feels right.

Bill Gasiamis 1:16:06
Yeah, it’s a two way conversation, whereas before it was one way.

Roderick Jefferson 1:16:14
Yeah, I leave the keynote guy up on the stage, even on the stage now I’m up there having conversations. I’m not giving presentations anymore. I’m talking a lot more about this subject than just the the productivity and the revenue piece, and I’m still doing that, don’t get me wrong, and there’s a place for that, but I think because of this, it’s given me a different platform now, and also different to your point of going and doing your 15 minute coming up, it gives us different stages, which now gives us an opportunity to impact different people differently.

Roderick Jefferson 1:16:55
It’s not just about the money. Money doesn’t hurt, but it’s not that’s not the primary driver, it’s How can I go and help somebody and and my wife says the same thing every time I leave, or when I’m jumping on something like this, she’ll pop her head in, she’ll look at me, and she says the same thing every time go make a new friend, and it just puts me into a whole different mindset and a different phase of life. Go make a new friend.

Roderick Jefferson 1:17:31
If we can do that every day, imagine how much sweeter life is because there’s enough garbage going on out there in the world, but at the same time, there are still some wonderful folks. And I saw something on social media the other day. There are a lot of really good people in the world. If you can’t find one today, be one.

Bill Gasiamis 1:17:58
Yes, that is awesome. I want to, I’m aware of your time, and I want to get us to the end, because I this could be a very long.

Roderick Jefferson 1:18:11
We could talk all night about this conversation.

The Hardest Thing About The Stroke

Bill Gasiamis 1:18:14
So, with that in mind, what was the hardest thing about stroke for you?

Roderick Jefferson 1:18:22
The hardest thing was, as an athlete, not having any control of my faculties, as a speaker, not being able to articulate what I was feeling and going through, that was the hardest part. Well, that was second hardest, the hardest was seeing the pain in my family’s eyes and every day being terrified as to whether or not I would wake up the next day. That was tough on me, you know, as a man, I’ve been married for 34 years now. I’ve got two lovely children, grandchild. I’ve always believed that my role was to provide and protect, I can’t protect or provide for-from not here.

Roderick Jefferson 1:19:14
That was the hard part. Remember when I came home from the hospital laying on the couch and thinking, if it’s crazy stuff that goes through your head, if someone busted the door down now and ran into my house, there was nothing I could do, nothing. And so what it did for me was it opened up, I’ve never really considered myself to be religious, but it opened up a whole different level of spirituality for me, and also, I realized that every time I tried to drive the bus, proverbially of life, I hit a wall or a tree, which I include the stroke.

Roderick Jefferson 1:19:54
But I realized when I sit in the passenger side and I let the. God, drive, I’m realizing how beautiful the scenery is that I missed out on by just trying to always be in control, always be in on top of things. Now it’s not about power, control, any of that, it’s literally about enjoying now, I’m not saying I live in its utopia, but things that used to frustrate me, I’ll admit it, I had a really, really bad problem with road rage, especially here in San Francisco, Bay Area.

Roderick Jefferson 1:20:35
Now, things that used to just infuriate me, they don’t even hit my radar anymore, not at all, I’m like ‘Wow, could be worse. And I’m reminded every time I drive past my hospital, it could be a lot worse, right?

The Lessons From The Stroke

Bill Gasiamis 1:20:55
Yeah, what is something that stroke has taught you? I know we’ve spoken a lot about the lessons, but what’s something that stands out?

Roderick Jefferson 1:21:06
What stands out for me is personally, we do all of the things we do professionally to again, provide and protect and take care of your family, but everything that I was doing was actually taking me away from them more, and I was too egotistical to even see it. I was loving being on the road. At one point, I was seeing beautiful places. I was going everywhere. I remember my kids got older, and they’re like ‘Dad,sure, we loved Hawaii.

Roderick Jefferson 1:21:33
We loved having a really nice, affluent life, but we would have wished that you were home, my friends dads are at our basketball games, our cheerleading pieces, our dancing competitions. I’m looking around like, where’s my dad? I miss my daughter’s eighth grade graduation. I was in Paris. It was a beautiful view, but she’s 34 now, and she still will never let me forget that. I mean, so now it goes back to being present.

Bill Gasiamis 1:22:07
There’s people listening who in to learn from our discussion, and they’re probably all, all over the spectrum of stroke and then recovery. Would you like to tell them? What kind of wisdom is this something that you could impart for the people that are where we’ve been before.

Roderick Jefferson 1:22:37
It’s going to get dark, gonna get really dark. Don’t give up because there’s somebody counting on you to get back, and if you remember your why, you’ll keep fighting. And like both you and I have talked about for the last hour, the lesson that comes out of your stroke may not be for you, it may be for everyone else around you, or people that are watching and paying attention that you don’t even know exist, don’t let them down.

Bill Gasiamis 1:23:16
Yeah, that is a very cool answer that’s kind of like the what kind of example, do you want to lead? Do you want to be the terrible example of how you go about recovery and how you overcome things? Or, do you want to be the example of, say, your loved ones are watching, or your grandkids are watching. You want to be the example of when they go through something terrible in their life, which inevitably they will.

Bill Gasiamis 1:23:50
They’ve got a a previous experience that they can reflect on and go, Well, okay, that’s how that person handled them. I wonder if I could perhaps go down that path, then one of those really terrible ways of handling a diversity.

Roderick Jefferson 1:24:10
Absolutely, I firmly believe that legacy is what happens when you don’t care who’s watching, because you’re just being real, an optimal dig, that’s legacy, everything else is brand and marketing at this point.

Bill Gasiamis 1:24:29
Thank you so much for being on the podcast, for reaching out and for connecting with me and sharing your story.

Roderick Jefferson 1:24:35
Thank you so much. I truly appreciate it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:24:38
That brings us to the end of episode, 325 I hope Roderick Jefferson’s story of surviving a near death ischemic stroke inspired you as much as it did me. His resilience and determination and journey of post traumatic growth offer hope for anyone navigating the ups and downs of recovery before we wrap up, I want to give a heartfelt thank you to everyone who leaves comments on the YouTube channel every single day, you are part of what makes this community so special, and your words often touch the lives of stroke survivors around the world.

Bill Gasiamis 1:25:14
I also want to acknowledge the almost 50 people who have left the five star review on Spotify and the many more who have done the same on iTunes, Your support makes all the difference helping others discover the podcast and offering them the same encouragement you found here. If you haven’t already, please consider leaving a five-star rating on iTunes or Spotify, and for those watching on YouTube, remember to like, comment and subscribe to stay updated on future episodes. And finally, if you’d like to further support the podcast, head over to patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke.

Bill Gasiamis 1:25:47
Every contribution helps us bring more stories like Rodericks, to those who need hope and guidance on their recovery journey. If you’re a stroke survivor with a story to share, I’d love to hear from you. My interviews are relaxed and unscripted, so just come as you are. You can also visit recoveryafterstroke.com/contact. If you’d like to sponsor an episode of the show, please get in touch. Thanks for joining me on the podcast today, and I can’t wait to see you on the next episode you.