Navigating Life After an Embolic Stroke: Mark Vega

Embolic Stroke: What You Need to Know About Causes, Symptoms, and Recovery

Introduction

An embolic stroke is a medical emergency that requires immediate attention. Understanding what it is, why it happens, and how recovery works is crucial for anyone affected—whether as a survivor or a caregiver. This article will explore everything you need to know about embolic strokes, from causes and symptoms to treatment and recovery strategies.

What Is an Embolic Stroke?

An embolic stroke occurs when a blood clot or other debris forms elsewhere in the body—often in the heart—and travels to the brain, blocking blood flow. This type of ischemic stroke deprives the brain of oxygen and nutrients, causing brain cells to die within minutes.

The term “embolic” refers to the embolus, or traveling clot, which distinguishes this stroke type from others caused by clots forming directly in the brain.

Common Causes of Embolic Stroke

Understanding the root causes of an embolic stroke can help with prevention and management. Common causes include:

1. Atrial Fibrillation (AFib)
   Irregular heartbeats can lead to the formation of blood clots, which may travel to the brain.
2. Heart Valve Disorders
   Conditions like endocarditis or mechanical heart valves increase the risk of clots.
3. Carotid Artery Disease
   Plaque buildup in the neck arteries can dislodge and become an embolus.
4. Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT)
   Though less common, clots from the legs can travel to the brain through a condition called paradoxical embolism.

Recognizing the Symptoms of an Embolic Stroke

Time is critical in treating a stroke. Recognizing the signs can save lives and reduce long-term damage. Common symptoms include:

• Sudden Weakness or Paralysis
  Particularly on one side of the body.
• Speech Difficulties
  Slurred speech or inability to find words.
• Facial Droop
  One side of the face may appear uneven or drooped.
• Severe Headache
  Often described as the worst headache of their life.
• Vision Problems
  Sudden loss of vision or double vision.

If you suspect an embolic stroke, remember the acronym BE FAST (Balance, Eyes, Face, Arms, Speech, Time) and seek emergency medical help immediately.

How Is an Embolic Stroke Diagnosed?

Medical professionals use a combination of tools to diagnose an embolic stroke:

1. CT or MRI Scans
   To identify blockages or damage in the brain.
2. Echocardiogram
   To check the heart for clots or irregularities.
3. Carotid Ultrasound
   To detect plaque buildup in the carotid arteries.
4. Blood Tests
   To rule out other conditions or check for clotting disorders.

Treatment for Embolic Stroke

The treatment plan depends on the severity and timing of the stroke. Common treatments include:

• Clot-Busting Medications (tPA)
  Administered within a few hours to dissolve the clot.
• Mechanical Thrombectomy
  A minimally invasive procedure to physically remove the clot.
• Anticoagulant Therapy
  Long-term medications like warfarin or DOACs to prevent future clots.
• Surgical Intervention
  Rarely, surgery may be needed to address the underlying cause, such as a blocked carotid artery.

Recovery After an Embolic Stroke

Recovery is a highly individualized process that depends on the location and severity of the stroke. Key elements of rehabilitation include:

1. Physical Therapy
   To regain mobility and strength.
2. Speech Therapy
   To address communication difficulties.
3. Occupational Therapy
   To relearn daily tasks and improve quality of life.
4. Mental Health Support
   Coping with the emotional toll of a stroke is just as important as physical recovery.
5. Lifestyle Changes
   Adopting a heart-healthy diet, quitting smoking, and exercising regularly can reduce the risk of future strokes.

Tips for Caregivers

Caregivers play a vital role in the recovery process. Here are some ways to provide effective support:

• Encourage therapy participation and celebrate small wins.
• Help manage medications and follow-up appointments.
• Create a safe home environment by reducing fall risks.
• Seek out support groups for emotional and practical advice.

Preventing an Embolic Stroke

Prevention strategies can significantly reduce the risk of an embolic stroke. These include:

• Managing Atrial Fibrillation
  Regular check-ups and medication adherence are crucial.
• Healthy Lifestyle Choices
  Focus on a balanced diet, regular exercise, and avoiding smoking.
• Monitoring Blood Pressure
  High blood pressure is a significant risk factor for strokes.
• Controlling Diabetes and Cholesterol
  Keeping these conditions in check can protect your blood vessels.

Final Thoughts

An embolic stroke can be life-altering, but with immediate treatment, proper rehabilitation, and lifestyle changes, many survivors go on to live fulfilling lives. Education and awareness are essential for both prevention and recovery.

If you or someone you know has experienced an embolic stroke, know that recovery is possible, and support is available through a combination of medical care, therapy, and community resources.

Embolic Stroke: What You Need to Know About Causes, Symptoms, and Recovery

Mark Vega shares his inspiring journey of resilience, recovery, and hope after an embolic stroke. A must-hear story for stroke survivors!

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Highlights:

00:00 Mark Vega’s Introduction and Initial Stroke Experience
04:08 Hospital Experience and Self-Discharge
12:07 Recovery and Adjustments
21:10 Training for the Los Angeles Marathon
28:44 Second Stroke and Its Impact
44:01 Ongoing Recovery and Future Goals
57:57 The Impact of Stroke on Professional Life
1:04:59 Preparation and Strategy for the 100-Kilometer Run
1:12:47 Challenges and Mental Resilience at 50 Kilometers
1:17:50 The Importance of Crewing and Support
1:19:30 Bill Gasiamis’s Experience with Tony Robbins and Fire Walking
1:25:18 Mark Vega’s Philosophy and Running Goals
1:28:46 The Role of Mindset in Recovery and Future Goals
1:30:31 Final Reflections and Encouragement
1:33:44 Advice for Stroke Survivors and Final Thoughts

Transcript:

Mark Vega’s Introduction and Initial Embolic Stroke Stroke Experience

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
Hello everyone and welcome to another inspiring episode of the recovery after stroke podcast. Before we dive into today’s conversation, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your continued support. It’s because of this amazing community that I’m able to keep sharing stories resilience, hope and recovery. I would like to remind you also of my book The unexpected way that a stroke became the best thing that happened. It’s been empowering stroke survivors and caregivers with stories and practical steps towards growth and healing after stroke for 12 months now.

Bill Gasiamis 0:40
If you haven’t picked up your copy yet, you can find it on Amazon or a recoveryafterstroke.com/book. Now let’s talk about today’s guest. I’m thrilled to introduce you to Mark Vega, an embolic stroke survivor whose journey is nothing short of extraordinary. Mark faced his first stroke at age 51 and went on to navigate a second, more significant stroke, all while rebuilding his life and mindset. In this episode, Mark shares his powerful story of resilience, the lessons he learned about gratitude and determination and how he turned adversity into strength.

Bill Gasiamis 1:20
Let’s get started. Mark Vega, welcome to the podcast.

Mark Vega 1:27
Thank you, Bill, good to Good to see you and good to be seen, I suppose.

Bill Gasiamis 1:31
Indeed. Thank you, mate. Tell me a little bit about what happened to you.

Mark Vega 1:40
Active professional was 51 years old. High metabolism had had it for a long time. High metabolism active, very physically active and otherwise and one day I lost my I went to instruct a new intern in my office and found myself searching for words. Thought to myself, Man, I need a whole pot of coffee. Something’s wrong here, right? I just couldn’t have come up with words, I was trying to tell an intern to just simply add photographs to a big photo shoot we’d done over the weekend.

Mark Vega 2:21
And we had done to fix up some some homes at the time that we’re using, going to utilize solar power in Southern California. This is 2015 and that’s a simple enough set of instructions. You know, just take the photos and put them in the right folders, add them to the website, simple, easy, but after a few minutes of trying to describe to this young intern what I wanted him to do, I realized, okay, something’s not working here. So I asked my operations person to kind of take over. I said ‘I’ll I need a whole pot of coffee and I’ll be back.

Mark Vega 2:59
And then walked out the door and uttered words that I hadn’t uttered before. That was, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m going to go straight to the doctor, and I’m not sure what words I use, but they understood I was leaving. So went to the doctor and have a full TED Talk version of this long story, you know, for some time, but the the version was, I went to the doctor, went to my internist right away. He didn’t know what was wrong, seemed everything would be okay, but I just missed my words, I wasn’t I took the fast test.

Mark Vega 3:37
My face was fine, my eyes were fine, my speech wasn’t slurry, and I could pick up my arms and so the traditional indicators for you might be having a stroke. We didn’t see so he said ‘Well, take this baby aspirin and I’ll figure out. We’ll line up an MRI sometime later today, or something, okay, by the time I get home, by the time I get home, my my wife had done some research and said ‘You had a stroke, I’m certain of it. I’m like ‘Oh, I didn’t have a stroke, he would have told me how to stroke.

Hospital Experience and Self-Discharge

Mark Vega 4:08
Said ‘Nah, we’re not sure. So I go home, and I get to the house, and she calls for an ambulance to take me to the hospital. I’m sitting out on a bench out in front of the of the in my front yard, and ambulance comes around, and the paramedics come in and says, where’s the where’s the patient? And I stood up in my front yard and looked to the side and realized ‘oh, that’s me, me, me, me, me, me, me, I’m the guy, I’m the guy. So I’m talking a mile a minute, because it seemed as though if all I had to tell them was like, my wife’s in the house, I need to go take me to the hospital.

Mark Vega 4:50
I think I had a stroke. But what I said was something like ‘You guys are great. In house, you know, my wife, I’m here to the go the hospital is like ‘Let’s go. So that’s what I told the paramedics. The paramedics were a little confused, you know, thinking I might have been on crack or something. I’m not sure. My wife comes out and said he had a stroke, but his doctors said he’ll get an MRI later. Just take him in. Okay, so we go in and go to the hospital and in Los Angeles, and have to wait a long time, a very long time.

Mark Vega 5:36
I’m on a on a gurney, and they do a little checking, but there’s no MRI. Nothing happens until late at night 9, 10 o’clock. The doctor had previously scheduled me to have an MRI at six or so. He canceled that because now I was checked in or I was at the hospital. In the emergency room, did the MRI, but they wouldn’t tell me the results. They checked me into the hospital and said they’re going to tell me in the morning. So I in the morning, a woman, nurse comes in and says ‘Okay, well, good news and bad news.

Mark Vega 6:07
The good news is doctors coming, but he can’t come till about 9:30 and I look at my watch, and it’s, I don’t know, eight in the morning. I’m like, okay, great. That’s, you know, an hour. And she said ‘No, 9:30 at night. What? I think this is insane Bill. I don’t never heard of such a thing, and all I know for sure is my words are still disappearing, like I don’t know what is happening. I feel fine, but I’m speaking in this truncated manner because I can. It’s like The Matrix when those little green numbers go right. I was imagining diction, words and addiction, I open up the pages just disappearing.

Mark Vega 6:47
So that wasn’t acceptable to me. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but this seemed crazy, right? So little bit like Liam Neeson and some really cool movie. I stand up out of bed and I take off my hospital gown, and I literally rip out the EKG, rip out all the monitors, I put my clothes on, and I just storm out of the hospital. I’m on the pit floor or something, and I just walk past everybody. I’m consciously trying to make eye contact with people so somebody can tell me stop, you know, help.

Mark Vega 7:17
But I’m just kind of frustrated, I leave and I take the car, I get out, I start walking down the streets on set Boulevard. So clearly I’m not exactly aware of what exactly is happening, right? But I’m walking. So I call my wife, and I said ‘I left the hospital because they don’t know what they’re doing. She’s like ‘Wait, what? Where are you? What did you do? I left the hospital. They don’t let you leave. I said ‘Well, I left, I gotta go. I think I gotta go. And she’s now ‘Call your doctor, do something, call the doctor right away. She calls the hospital.

Mark Vega 7:49
Meanwhile, looks for me, and the hospital says, well, we can’t find him, but she can’t find him. What happened? Where is he? What’s the deal? So she’s super upset. Meanwhile, my Internist, I can’t even on the phone, I can’t even tell I did a message and says, if it’s an emergency, plus press one. So I look at my phone, and I hang up, and I call my wife back. I’m like, is this an emergency? Do I press one right now? And she said ‘Yeah, do that. So I call back the doctor. He gets on the phone. He’s like, go directly to Cedar Sinai. Here’s a guy I’m going to connect you with.

Mark Vega 8:21
Don’t just that hospital, terrible, just go to Cedars. So I go into cedars and but I don’t go to the hospital. I go right to the doctor’s office, into the neurologist office. I bang on the door, walk in and I say ‘Hey, I’m a new guy, but I just had this thing. I just walked out of the hospital. I’m blah blah, blah, blah, blah at this point, Bill, they also know I’m a lawyer, because I must have said that I identify myself. So all we know is this, this neurologist who’s one of the leaders of the organization, of the group, right? I got this.

Mark Vega 8:49
He’s got this crazy, quote, unquote patient who says he’s a quote, unquote lawyer, who says he just walked out of the hospital and he thinks he’s had a stroke. He doesn’t know this is a candid camera episode or some other kind of reality prank show. He doesn’t know for sure, but he lets me in Doctor. Hey, I’m only talking past because I’m losing my words and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know exactly if I’m losing words or not, but it feels like I’m losing my words. He’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, okay, okay. But he doesn’t trust anything, right?

Mark Vega 9:17
Well, right about on cue, bing, my wife calls my phone, so I’m able to say ‘Here, talk to her, and my the doctor’s like ‘Oh, this is bizarre. But of course, you know, we meet all kinds, don’t we? Mean all kinds. So it picks up the phone. Yes, doctor is true. He just walked out of, out of Presbyterian Hollywood, Presbyterian Hospital, and they tried to check him in last night. They’ve got results, but they won’t give him the results. So the doctor said ‘Okay, hang on. So my wife had the guy’s phone number somehow, I don’t even know how the my new neurologist calls.

Mark Vega 9:51
The guy says, Hey, this is Doctor blah, blah, blah at Cedars. My patient Mark Vega is right in front of me. The guy, did you do the test? Guy says ‘Yes, my new doctor says, go to Line 46 and 47 or something like that. Read off the data. So he reads off the data. Whatever that was. I don’t understand. It didn’t matter. But it felt like this guy was finally listening, and I finally had somebody pay attention to what I was doing.

Mark Vega 10:14
And I was kind of for just the first moment, I started to think maybe I don’t have to speak even as quickly as I’m speaking to you right now, Bill, because finally, maybe those words will stop disappearing. But I don’t know that for sure, but I think that’s possible, right?

Bill Gasiamis 10:26
So let’s take a quick pause here before we dive back into Mark’s incredible journey and insights about embolic stroke recovery. I want to talk about how you can help support the podcast. This podcast has been a labor of love from the start, and I’ve been covering the costs myself to bring these episodes to you, but to keep it going and achieve my goal of reaching 1000 episodes, I would like your help. If these episodes have made you feel less alone or glad that you found the show. You can make a difference by helping ensure that future stroke survivors have the same experience.

Bill Gasiamis 11:06
Your support on Patreon makes it possible to continue recording and sharing stories that remind stroke survivors they’re never alone on this journey. Please consider becoming a Patreon today. Every contribution helps me keep creating content that connects, educates and inspires. Visit patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke to learn more. Now let’s get back to Mark Vega and hear more about his experience and the lessons he’s learned along the way.

Mark Vega 11:37
He gets the data, and he looks at me and my wife’s on the cell phone right in the ring. He looks at me, he says ‘Well, you definitely had a stroke, you might have had a major stroke, and I’m so glad that your doctor gave me that baby aspirin, because I can’t even tell you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. So I’m going to get you checked in real quick, and we’re going to take care of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, good. I get checked in. Ultimately, I’m there for about a week, right intensive care for a minute, and then they transfer me to the stroke Ward.

Embolic Stroke Recovery and Adjustments

Mark Vega 12:07
Ischemic stroke on one side of my brain. They determine it is ultimately, though, diagnosis, prognosis is embolic stroke of undetermined source, the all elusive, ESUS. Now they say Bill that maybe 3% of the people of the 1000s of have strokes every year are captured in that 3% range, right? So that means every year that’s from could be 1500 to a couple 1000 people like me, like you, like people every year, like okay, what that means is they don’t really know what caused it, they don’t know what to how to prevent it. They can’t guarantee that it won’t happen again.

Mark Vega 12:44
Those things we know for sure, none of those are very self satisfying, right? We’re not very satisfied with that at all. However, I’m alive, right? And within a couple days, the words stopped disappearing. I was able to speak more deliberately. I could always speak deliberately and slower Bill, but I just was concerned. It was the matrix, I’m like, I better.

Bill Gasiamis 13:08
Get the words out while you can.

Mark Vega 13:11
Yeah, I get paid. I get paid to speak, and the words are important to me. And yes, I can write, write, write, but speaking is important, right? So after a few days, I sensed that the words leakage had stopped, so I didn’t have I didn’t get back things, but it just felt like the the matrix stopped right, so the the letters were no longer falling off the page. But at that time, I flipped through the encyclopedia or the dictionary, and still there were big spots of white spots on the on the dictionary, like, well, I don’t know what was there. It looks like it was I because it’s in alphabetical order.

Mark Vega 13:45
In my mind, I could, well, I can imagine, imagine that some pieces, I could tell what was right before it and what was right after it. And later on, my confirmation bias, or my own research Bill let me know that, in fact, that’s kind of how the brain rewires itself. Anyway. If there is holes on the page right, we the synapses fire above and below and all around, and so all of a sudden, the neural networks kind of reconnect, right?

Mark Vega 14:08
Doesn’t happen right away, and I didn’t know anything about this at the time was happening? Obviously, we all have to learn through our own lived experiences, but that seems to be what was happening. So that’s just the first one. Can I keep telling with going to my story? I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to if you’re falling asleep, you’re bored about it, I want to tell you because you’ve heard a lot of stroke stories, man.

Bill Gasiamis 14:30
I had one delivered quite like this. Man, keep going.

Mark Vega 14:36
Listen, I’m 51 years old. The doctor’s like, well, that’s, that’s, you’re kind of young for this kind of a stroke to happen doesn’t make sense. So it wasn’t hemorrhagic, there wasn’t some event that happened that we could identify, like blood vessel burst or something was nothing like that. And also didn’t have any kind of history of anything, and in my family that we as far as we could tell, and all the research and study that we done, right? So. Okay, well, I’m alive. I’m grateful, but I don’t know if you did the same.

Mark Vega 15:08
I bet it is because I also had a business at that time and I and it’s the same business I now have today, right? Just like you still on the grind, still hustling, but when this first, when the first stroke happened all of a sudden, or not all of a sudden. But my instincts were to make my footprint small, because I still had to keep the business going and support my family and right, but I had to really, I just kind of like things.

Mark Vega 15:33
I just let things get small, drink a little or intentionally did, so the number of client personnel I had it shrunk, and the number of active outreach and collaborations and side hustles and other jobs and other work things I were doing, I just kind of let them go on their own. I just couldn’t I, and there was no doctor told me to do this. Nobody in my life was saying, keep doing more Mark, and nobody was really saying you shouldn’t do anything, because you know why? Just if this is your experience, because nobody knows, nobody really knows.

Mark Vega 16:07
You don’t know about stroke when they realize it’s not a heart attack and it’s just stroke, when the moment people realize it’s your brain, in my experience, anyway, they want to be supportive, they want to be helpful, but in the back of their head, they’re kind of like, if they couldn’t see you react, your reaction. I imagine all my friends going, what his brain? But they don’t say that. But your brain, oh my god, that’s so that’s so messed up. Oh god, I guess you can’t do anything for the rest of your life.

Mark Vega 16:39
You know, in your head, in my head, I was like, I didn’t want my clients to have that reaction, didn’t want my family to have that reaction, didn’t want my friends and neighbors to have that reaction. So I just made my footprint small, and I had a core group of people who were family members and some important clients and people who had known me all along, and you know, their reaction initially, some of those clients, my closest clients, who are still clients today, their initial reaction was ‘Thank God at least when they now, you’re not, not going to talk as much as that.

Mark Vega 17:10
That’s kind of an upside for me, they would say, right. So, we took that in stride and really kept a good smile on our faces. And I thought I had to in the process of me making my footprint small, my business small, like I didn’t want to make mistakes, right? I didn’t want to do anything that was going to mess up the business. But at the same time, it’s possible, though we did 8000 tests, it’s possible that stress and other levels might have contributed to some of this, right?

Mark Vega 17:41
You never really determine exactly, but in order to prevent that, we just get rid of anything that is extraneous, right? That’s what we try to do. One thing I hadn’t done, though, and my neurologist was suggesting this, as long as the cardiologist too, I used to run when I was much younger, but I hadn’t done so for years because my knees got I’m a US Army veteran, and I hurt my knees, not in active duty, not in more time at all, but just I was, I was deployed in South Korea, and I hurt both my knees and had surgeries.

Mark Vega 18:11
And so, okay, my running days might have been over, maybe, right, so, but the doctors were like ‘Mark, you should, you should start, you know, working out again, but not like with lifting weights, necessarily. Why don’t you just start walking? And I thought walking, walking, me walk, that I felt like I’d poke pencils in my eyes. No, I’m not gonna. I’m not a walker. What do you mean in a mall? I’m a young guy. I’m like, what I can’t that’s not the image I need or want, and I don’t see myself that way, right? And they laughed, and they said, okay, there.

Mark Vega 18:43
Okay, hot shot, well, what do you what do you think? Am I? Well, can I? Can I run? And he’s like, Well, he’s your card, and you got I’m like, I get it. I had a cardiologist at that time, not because I had a heart attack, but because, remember, we in embolic stroke of undetermined source. We don’t really know what causes stroke, so the neurologist and cardiologist and my internist, like I had a little team now, doctors scratching their head, figuring, I don’t know, you’re kind of an anomaly there.

Mark Vega 19:07
Remember the first time I saw you? You busted down my door and started talking a mile a minute, telling me you just walked out of a hospital as my neurologist, right? And he said ‘So remember that made an impression on me. So part of the energy and the vibe and exactly who you are. You’re still that guy, Mr. Vega, you’re still that guy. I’m like, well, good, good. So even if that’s the you know, first impression of you to me, doctor, neurologist, I’m okay with that. So can I run? He says, Well, you’ll go slow. You’ll figure it out. But, yeah, go slow.

Mark Vega 19:37
So Bill, that’s, that’s what happened after many years, I decided to, I was going to try to run. And I thought, what better way? Because it used to run, what better way? Like, I’d never run a marathon. Like, wow, how about, how about if I run a marathon? Can I do that? He’s like, Well, of course, you can do anything you want. Okay, I’m going to try it. So this is stroke. Is June, 2015 first one by August, 2015 I’m ready to, like mobile. I ready to kind of get some real exercise, I’m ready to do something, right? I gotta do something. And I still have a small footprint.

Mark Vega 20:16
From a business perspective, I don’t know if you did this, Bill. I saw some of your recovery photos when you were like, trying to get ambulatory again, I felt that the one thing I could control was my movement, my body movement. And I’ve now, since then, have come across a lot of stroke survivors that have talked to all different types of stroke survivors and many different modalities, many different levels of Ambulatory abilities, et cetera, et cetera, right?

Mark Vega 20:40
And so I was really grateful, because at the time, my brain, my stroke, just impacted in such a specific element of impact that I was grateful for everything else, right? So running made sense to me, and I had run for a long time. And at the time, I’m 51 that’s not old, but it certainly wasn’t that young either, right? So I’m not going to be, I’m not going to be running races to win races, but just the idea of running in the first instance like that should be enough, right? That should be good.

Training for the Los Angeles Marathon

Mark Vega 21:10
So I do it. I start to train, and I see the Los Angeles marathon. 2016 is on Valentine’s Day. 2016 february 14. Oh, right, come on, that’s an aspirational thing. I’m in Los Angeles. Happens, I have a LA Marathon in a couple of months. I’m there, man, I’m in it. I’m going to try. I’m going to do it. So I get a coach, and I go online, and I figure out what I’m supposed to do I’m not supposed to do, and and I start. And it took a long time to get going, because at first, initially, I guess because I was monitoring my heart rate, I had to actually walk.

Mark Vega 21:43
I had to walk enough so that I could start to walk faster so my heart wouldn’t go crazy, right? So I started to train and the real and really embrace the idea that we’re training. I was in the US military, in the army, and we ran road guard. I ran all kinds of exercises, but that’s a very different scenario of training that you’re training, trying to learn how to cooperate with 125 people all moving in the same direction, very different from just going out there for your own health and getting out and running. So I run, I run. I do all the programs on January 10.

Mark Vega 22:17
So listen, almost a month away from the marathon bill, I feel so good. My physical footprint, my for my business hasn’t expanded, because I’m still really questioning, because it just had happened, right? I’m just grateful that I didn’t lose clients, and you know, but I just didn’t want to pretend like I knew more than I knew about these strokes, right? With very leery. Didn’t want to talk to much anybody to say this happened or that happen, and certainly, as a lawyer, I discovered this, there’s a lot of lawyers who are kind of closeted. They’re quiet about ever having a stroke.

Mark Vega 22:49
Why? Because they’re lawyers. Yeah, I tell the world that their brain had some kind of anomaly, but luckily, you and I can tell them, and you’ve told the world a lot, you inspire people, y ou communicate well with them. But really, the brain is so fascinating that it’s possible to injure your brain so significantly that it takes years for that brain to start to come back, indeed. But for the vast majority of brain injuries, that’s not true. We had extra brain we just not right? So you just gotta give the time chance and time to rewire the little black skid marks, right?

Mark Vega 23:22
So the for that stroke had us, you know, skid mark over my ear. If you look in the MRI like, oh, there it is. It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t get better. It doesn’t become not black. But the wiring synapses, everything just rewires around it. No problem, right? I like that. So it’s a month before the, the the LA Marathon, right? Valentine’s Day, 2016 Are you excited? I’m so excited, just reliving it. It’s so fun. A month before, I don’t know if you run it all or do training, but you run a marathon for a long distance run, right?

Mark Vega 23:53
Usually about a couple of weeks, and sometimes a month before you start what’s called a taper. Now you still have to exercise with the same amount of intensity, but for a few weeks before the race, you you reduce the quantity of training. So you might run 20 miles, and then you’re going to start, then you’re going to go, you know, to 10 miles and eight miles and six miles and three miles. While you get there, though you’re still not You’re not slowing down the intensity, but the quantity of training, you slow down.

Mark Vega 24:23
So a month before my 26.2 mile, first marathon ever, in the history of ever, I’m going to be running on Valentine’s Day or eight story, in my mind, I’m going to do it. I will have done it. Bill, I tackled it. I’m going to do it. A month before that, I do this long run, about 20 miles, and feeling great. Never felt so good, really, physically and mentally, just all good. And I was on a, this was a that was a long run on a Saturday, next day, on Sunday, January 11, 2016 I’m fixing myself some lunch, having a salad, somewhere on my lunch counter, kitchen counter.

Mark Vega 25:03
And I reached down to pick up a mug, pick up a cup, and like this, I can do it this way, no problem. But then I reached to get this cup on the counter, and I just knocked it over, like on the floor. Luckily, there’s no water in it. Like, okay, what? I don’t even notice. I just knocked on the floor, and I bent down to pick it up and and I and I bent down to pick it up, and I I see my I see now I’m blur my background from it. I see my hands. I reach down to pick up the cup, and my hands are like this on the floor. So I kneel down on the floor, and I’m still in this moment.

Mark Vega 25:39
In that moment, I’m still not realizing what I’m doing. I mean, I don’t realize that this is the things I’m actually going like this. I’m trying to get the cup, and I say to my daughter, who’s in the house, the house is filled with people. I don’t know why, but anyway, there was it was, right? He yells, my daughter, Hey, David, can you come in here? Help me? I just dropped the cup, right? But she doesn’t hear me say that, my daughter hears me say, and she she comes in the she comes in the kitchen.

Mark Vega 26:11
She’s like ‘Dad, you are such a goof. And she walks out, you know, with her bone in her hand. Meanwhile, I’m on the floor. I knelt down, and the next thing I realized, Bill, I can’t stand up. So not only can, I can’t pick up the cup, but I’m kneeling on the floor. Now, at this moment, I still don’t know that anything’s happening. I just know I just doesn’t, I can’t pick up the cup, and my wife comes in the she comes sliding into the frame in the doorway, right when you’re in the kitchen, and she’s got her phone on her ear, and so she slides into frame with her phone up into her ear.

Mark Vega 26:48
It’s almost like Tom Cruise when she he slides into the frame of that movie, Risky Business when he had a own brush, of a hairbrush, and like he’s going to sing like a microphone, she slides in the frame with her thing with the phone in her ear, and she runs toward me onto the floor and says, Mark, Mark, shut up, shut up. You’re gonna scare everybody. And I’m like, I just dropped the cup. What are you talking about? But I don’t say that. I say she’s like, Shut up. Don’t see any work like what she said, Mark, you had another stroke. And I’m like, you didn’t have a stroke.

Mark Vega 27:30
I dropped the glass. I can’t pick up the glass, but she hears me, so she freaks out. She cups. She puts her horn over and like so violent for such a just picking up a cup I should have covers your face. She grabs under my arm. She says, come. She says to my yells to my daughter, Hey, baby, how many come in here? I gotta help your dad for a second. So she comes in, and they get under my arm, and they sit me on the sit me on the chair. And again, I’m like ‘fI just dropped a cup, and both of them hear me say, but bizarre.

Mark Vega 28:09
So I put my head my hands for a second, put my hand on the table. With just a couple seconds, right, happened? Next thing I know in that, within those three seconds, I swear, paramedics are busting through my door like full gear, Fireman with full gear like in front and I’m thinking, was this a setup? Because that just happened four seconds ago. What is going on comes in through the front door. Mr. Bank, we understand you. We think you had another stroke, and understand you had a stroke six months ago. But I’m like, I didn’t have a stroke, I’m fine. I just dropped the glass.

Second Stroke and Its Impact

Mark Vega 28:44
And then the paramedics hear me say my explanation, and they’re like ‘Oh my god. So I’m looking at their eyeballs. I’m looking at their reaction Bill just like yours, and they’re looking at me like their their reaction is, you know, like this, they’re like, and like, in my mind, I’m like, don’t talk. What are they? What’s What do you guys? What’s going on, man, what is going on? So I go to stand up, and they’re like, they put my hand, which I just sit there, Mr. Vega, just hang on.

Mark Vega 29:16
It’s like, okay. Calls and he says, Mr. Vega, against medical advice, you’re going to send me away, but you have to tell me to go away, because it’s against medical advice. I’m telling you, we need to take you to hospital, you had no stroke. I didn’t have a stroke anyway. Stand up, they can’t stop me. But this point, I stand up, and I go over to the counter and I pick up a Kleenex. I feel like I gotta blow my nose for someone I pick up, blow my nose. And when I do that, I can’t I like this, blowing my nose to your face, watching me just like I’m at I still don’t know anything’s going on.

Mark Vega 29:51
I don’t even see myself. Like, blow my nose. And when that happens, I did sense, like, a little bit of clarity in my head, like ‘Oh, liike, when you go above. But you know, when you’re a flight and your ears start popping when you’re high above and a high elevation felt like that. But next thing I know, paramedics got a phone exam, Mr. Vega, we’ve got the nurse on from some cedars. she, we believe he spoke with you six months ago. So I take the phone. I’m like, this. I’m ‘That’s me. Hello, huh? He’s like ‘Mr. Vega, we think this is Joe, Joe, Joe, blah, blah, blah.

Mark Vega 30:22
We I saw you six months ago. You believe you had your first stroke. So I believe we believe you’ve had another stroke. Now I’m against medical device. You can tell these paramedics go away, but Miss vague, I think you had a stroke. I think you got to come see me. So for the first time ever, Bill as I got the phone in my ear, I see the paramedic, I see my family’s concerned faces for the first time ever, I realized my hands dangling on a butt was ridiculous.

Mark Vega 30:48
But I realized everything happened, and I say something like ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, everybody, I’m so sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Let’s go, so for the first time I hear that language I just spoke, and I can hear that it’s messed up, but I can understand what I’m saying. And at that moment, they could understand it too. So they got me in the they got took me to cedars, went in there quickly and ending, wrapping up, ending this story. So on the other side of my brain, the stroke twice as big as the first one other side of my brain.

Mark Vega 31:25
First one, there’s a skid mark about the width of my pinky. Second one’s a skid mark about the width of my thumb on the by the other ear. And same thing, ischemic stroke, embolic stroke, undetermined source. They still don’t know what it is, but I’ll tell you this bill, and we’re almost to the end of the story for now, at least the story of the stroke itself. They added another doctor for me, this time a blood guy. So now I get a whole team, like I’ve never. Had never had a team of what this is, insane.

Mark Vega 31:55
Anyway, I had turned 52, so now I’m 52 and, remember, it’s, you know, it’s like a month, this would be right before the marathon. So I feel good. So I recovered that there was no word loss, and again, the artifacts were minimal. They existed, but at the time, I didn’t sense any of that, but the neurologist grabs me on the shoulder ‘So Mr. Vega, listen to me, had you not been exercising? Had you not been working and really maintaining an observation of your both your metabolism, your health, your heart, both your cardio and your steady state activities.

Mark Vega 32:37
That second stroke, it would have killed you. He had his hand on your eyes ‘Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And he shakes me, Bill. He shakes me ‘No. Mr. Vega, if you had not been exercising the way you had been exercising and that second stroke hit, you would be dead.

Mark Vega 33:11
First time ever in the history of ever I shut up, I could hear a pin drop, because for the first time ever, Bill, I heard him, I heard him, I heard what he said, I heard it, and I couldn’t I just I heard it. There was no doubt about it, I heard what he said, and I have to listen to it right now. I’m going to stop because this is crazy, I’ve gone been going on for too long, but I want to show you something I did start to recover, and by May of 2016 my everybody, the doctor, I’m like ‘Yeah, you can start training again. You can run again, if you like, you’re ready, we’re ready for that. Okay. Can I run a marathon? Sure.

Mark Vega 33:57
When can I run a marathon? I don’t know. What do you mean? I said no, when I got a train, so I can’t, like ‘When can I can I do it in October? Like the guy, nah, that’s not October. Can I do one in November? He says ‘Yeah, I think you know about November. So at that moment, first time ever in the history of ever, I looked up at the phone, like, November marathons, and I see, oh my god, New York feels like the biggest marathon in the world. I never run a marathon yet. Why not New York? I said ‘Can I do New York? And he says ‘Okay, yeah, sure, you can do New York.

Mark Vega 34:25
I’m like, Okay, I’m doing New York. So I trained and trained and trained. Was very happy to do that, and happily by November 6 to 2016 took me a long time, but I ran across that finish line. And it was nobody around, just me. But I ran across that finish line, Bill, and I sobbed. I was so satisfied, so happy, that it all came together. And nothing, it didn’t, you know, and clearly it didn’t kill me, and then I’ll just do one quick little display, if you can see that. So I went from running no matter, marathons at all, to 2016 I ran the New York City Marathon.

Mark Vega 35:03
I have since run the New York City Marathon twice. I’ve run la a couple of times. I’ve also run ultra marathons, and most recently, just last weekend, I ran a trail marathon that I really, really love. So I’ve got a 50k on the schedule. First time ever I’m going to run a 50 miler, and I’d like to do 100k, so when I turn 62 I want to run 62 miles, and on my bucket list is a 100 miler. Now that is really my stroke story.

Mark Vega 35:37
It’s all about the strokes, and none of this would be happening had I had each of those steps not been taken? So I, on one hand, Bill, I really apologize for taking up so much time to tell the story, but on the other, I appreciate that it feels like this platform more than any other platform in the history of platforms, right? This is the place you get to tell the stories, right?

Bill Gasiamis 35:59
Absolutely, it is really important to set the scene and to hear your energy and the way you go about things, because without the whole thing comes together, it makes sort of, it paints a perfect picture of who you are, like, what, who they’re dealing with, what kind of a person they’re dealing with. When you turn up to a hospital, there’s so many familiar parts of that story to my story. You know, I go to the hospital the third time I tell them I’m having a stroke, just put me into the MRI machine. Don’t worry about all the paperwork, don’t do any of that stuff, right?

Bill Gasiamis 36:36
You know, shrinking the business down and just kind of keeping it just skeleton staff just sort of ticking over a couple of important clients, helping me just cover the costs, pay a few of the bills, just keep me active, keep the brain ticking over. You know that’s familiar, being in really good health afterwards and just feeling great and then starting to exercise and riding bikes and all that kind of stuff.

Bill Gasiamis 37:04
And then the next one happens. You know, the whole thing sounds familiar? That the part that I want to understand is, what kind of a guy are you with regards to your probably been, you’ve been in dangerous combat zones, I imagine, or perhaps you’ve been in dangerous combat zones, had you as a Marine?

Mark Vega 37:33
No, I served the US, I mean, during the Cold War. So I was in South Korea for during the Cold War, was in early 80s, and so there was no active theater of engagements, except for Lebanon. There was a small one and Grenada. So there was no active theater of war at the time. But you woke up, you trained, you ran in PT every day, so you’re a constant state of readiness. But very different from many of my colleagues and veteran friends who have PTSD and significant PTSD. So I had the great fortune of not suffering through any PTSD with respect to separation or involvement in the military.

Bill Gasiamis 38:10
Yeah. And I imagine at that age, anyway, you’re not thinking about the possibility that you’re you’re going to die. You’re thinking, you know, you’re bulletproof. Mostly at that age, I imagine, to an extent, I know what what you’re doing. Yeah, you’re participating in but you’re not expecting it to ever happen to you, but at 51 had you ever considered this thing that happened to you as a serious health issue, and that, you know, because I did it 37 the first time.

Bill Gasiamis 38:37
I kind of thought I might not be around in six months. Like actually thought that, and it sunk in. You know, did you ever have that thought?

Mark Vega 38:44
I love the question. But the reason it’s so good is because you’ve had multiple strokes, and I have a good friend who I will introduce one time. His brand, he is Sean Anton is his name, and his brand is the stroke hacker.

Bill Gasiamis 38:44
Oh yeah.

Mark Vega 38:44
And he got choked out in an MMA, accident, 19, two down, 13, I think, and so had one stroke, but it really is debilitating. His left sides all messed up, still to this day, and he practices. He’s really a good human being, he had one. So we were, we knew each other long before then, but didn’t. Then we fell out of touch, and then after I had my strokes, I realized I got back in touch with them, and realized he had a stroke.

Mark Vega 39:27
So now the joke is, though, because I had two and he’s had one, so every time I see him, he’s like ‘Well, you had two, and he’s Yeah, so here’s how about this Bill, because we gotta keep it light, right? So I asked Sean that if I for some reason, if I stroke out at the third stroke, and I’m gone and you’re still alive, Sean, I want you to go up to I want you to present when I die. I want you to go up to the podium and I want you to say ‘Mark always said that no good joke starts with. Well, after my third major stroke.

Mark Vega 40:00
But here you are, you’re living proof, you are a third. You have three, I can’t believe it. So I love that. I love the question, because when, at what point in our lives do we, you know, think on existential elements of our lives, right? When do we say we’ve been we’ve had enough, and are we ready to go or never want to go right? So at 51, I can proudly say, after that first stroke, that it was in my mind, it was an anomaly. I don’t know what it was. The fact that medical science couldn’t tell me what it was. It was going to happen again. I’m like ‘Well, okay, I changed everything, though.

Mark Vega 40:38
I changed my my diet. I mean, I already been at high metabolism, and I’ve already done a lot of detoxing and changing diets, just for one way or another. So I’m always pretty active. Who you see right now is this guy, right? I’ve kind of always been that guy, but I took it more serious in that, well, thank God I’m alive. I would don’t want to leave. I had young kids. I don’t want obviously, I’m so grateful that I’m still here, and so I did think, man, I want to do everything I can to keep just doing things right, I don’t want to mess it up.

Mark Vega 41:13
And that would include like, training running, like, you know, it’s like, formally, when you commit to a training schedule, when a with a marathon or a race or other types of athletic events too, but because I had a an event, you know, I could keep my promises to myself. And I don’t know about you, but both in business and in life, when I do that, I’m going to be I’m going to be okay, because then I can trust the training. I’ve made promises to myself, no matter what happens then out in the universe, at least I made, I kept the promises to myself. I kept showing up, I kept bringing it right?

Mark Vega 41:46
So I’d have to say that was kind of my attitude during after the first one, but after, I trained for that marathon, and the other thing the blood doctor told me is, like getting there’s no way you’re running this marathon. You’re not running at all. We gotta figure this out, remember what? It killed you? No, no, Mister Vega, you would be dead. So after that conversation, I realized, that’s when I realized, Bill, okay, I’ve gotta look at this differently. I can’t I didn’t think, and I think this is the point of your question.

Mark Vega 42:17
I didn’t think at any moment that I was cavalier about how things happen, or what’s going on in my life, or how I treated the stroke, I never did, but after the second one, I realized, okay, I don’t know enough about this. I don’t know what this is, and it was not very comforting my friend to have a team of doctors to tell me right? First words out of the mouth, well, we don’t, you know. We gotta learn more about this. I’m like, what you don’t know either. Like, you know, it’s enough that I don’t know. But somebody should, somebody should know, right?

Mark Vega 42:54
Anyway, so that was my that was my sense of things that once after the second one happened, then everything I did in my life was seen through the filters of both of those strokes. So I have the chance like this time to give people talk to you this, tell you the story. If you tell the story of anyone, it’s fun, and I can talk about it’s interesting, but no, for me, it was the impact of having one unexpectedly training and doing everything I could to just be proud of myself that I survived one then somehow, was it something I did that brought on the second stroke.

Mark Vega 43:29
And as the blood doctor was like, no, if you wouldn’t have been training, you’d be dead. That’s how big the second one was, but because you are training, you’re alive, and we’re still trying to figure that out, and I wish I could they all we did. I did so many tests. I don’t know if you did this after more strokes, after the second one, I had more doctors, and I have read more tests were run on my system than anything, because then we had data. We had data from the first stroke, exactly what protocol we were using to deal with the first stroke, including my own training and all that kind of stuff.

Ongoing Recovery and Future Goals

Mark Vega 44:01
But my nutrition, diet, everything. And then after the second one, like ‘Okay, now we have more data. What is going on and to this day, though. So that was 2016 January. 2016 to this day, we are many, many miles away. And after the first year and second year, by the fifth year anniversary, I told myself, Bill ‘I’m done, I don’t want to keep talking about the strokes, I’m done with it. I’m over, right, but not true.

Mark Vega 44:28
And as I’ve listened to many of your guests and many of your YouTube videos and some of the podcasts, like, yeah, sometimes this, this is just one thing that happened to us in our life, just like my army service. It didn’t last for a long time with only a handful of years, but it was very real, so no need to delete it from my life resume, just like these jokes. No reason to do that, and then occasionally it’ll happen, even if I’m on a podcast or I’m on a meeting or something. Guess what? Occasionally a word will disappear.

Mark Vega 44:58
Now I know. I’m older now, I’m 61 so I know everyone’s ‘Oh yeah, we all forget words. Well, don’t tell anybody. But every once in a while, one of those words is not here, and I’ll guarantee you, Bill, it’s an artifact. It is an artifact of that first stroke. I know it because I look up in my mental image of that dictionary, and so the white spots are still there. Remember, there are still there.

Mark Vega 45:25
The neural network was able to rewire everything, and I’m fine and fully functional and better than ever, probably, but I’m telling you, there’s indelible marks on our brain, and we can understand and appreciate but we can’t ever fix we don’t ever you can’t get rid of it. You can work around it, right? Can’t get rid of it. Yeah, that’s a great that sound. Does that ring true for you? Some of that ring true for you?

Bill Gasiamis 45:53
It sure does. Man, that’s a great answer, because so for me, the first time again, they didn’t know what caused it this. These things happen every every so often. No big deal. Go back to work, try and get to business as usual, although they tell you not to go against doctors orders. The second one was six weeks later, and then it’s like ‘Wow. Okay, this thing hasn’t gone away. It hasn’t settled down. It isn’t the worst case scenario. It isn’t the the most unlikely scenario, the one that is going to sometimes they settle down on their own.

Bill Gasiamis 46:26
They stop bleeding. This one is still bleeding. Okay. Now all my cognition is gone, you know, my ability to type an email, talk, start, finish, send. This is all gone. I feel like I’m, you know, living in some kind of like a a mushroom trip. Most of the time, things are just all over the place. You know, for months, many, many.

Mark Vega 46:45
How long did that last? How long was that after the second one?

Bill Gasiamis 46:48
Look, it probably lasted about five or six months. Yeah, it’s just slightly different plane in and out. And sometimes I had clarity, and sometimes I was just so zoned out, like was just ridiculous. And what was difficult about it was it was happening when I was unex when I wasn’t expecting it. So it was kind of catching me off guard. And it wasn’t enjoyable to say, like a mushroom trip might be. It was, it was annoying, and it was in the way of my day, or what I was in the middle of doing, and it was like, Yeah, then this is not appropriate, right now.

Bill Gasiamis 47:27
I don’t want to be in this space, and that kind of made it worse. So then the but what I was doing like you, as soon as I understood that I had an arteriovenous malformation, like a blood vessel that was not healthy or not in the best shape, etc. What I did was try to control the controllables. So for me, all I could control was what I consumed, how I went about my day, how much effort and time I put into my work so the amount of hours shrunk.

Bill Gasiamis 48:05
I’ve controlled all those controllables so that by the time we were three years down the track, I hadn’t done my own words to myself, I hadn’t done anything to contribute to the Next one. Personally, if it happens again. It happens, but I haven’t done something to make it possible for the third one.

Mark Vega 48:27
Exactly, okay, and three years after, and then.

Bill Gasiamis 48:32
And that’s almost three years after, and then I was going to work, because by then, I had recovered enough the blood clot in my head that started about the size of a dime became the size of a golf ball, and then that started to decrease in size. And as it started to decrease in size, more and more, my brain came online with the looking after my my nutrition, no sugar, no caffeine, no gluten, no dairy, no alcohol with that, like my body was just in the best shape it had ever been, you know, for many years, for two decades.

Bill Gasiamis 49:10
And then when I got to work, and I was having that third sort of those symptoms again, and I thought of, I sort of knew What was happening. I understood where I was at. I just accepted it. I just accepted it. And I drove myself to the hospital. I just was matter of fact, told them what was happening. You guys do what you got to do. And then my surgeon came in probably a few hours later to check up once she discovered that her patient was back in hospital, and she said, We’ve got to go in and take this out. But I I was prepared for it, so I said to her, yep, no worries.

Bill Gasiamis 49:48
And she was a little bit taken aback by the fact that I responded so positively to the possibility of brain surgery, and she came back and checked again later, are you sure? Are we doing this? Are we going in and take. It out. I said, Whatever comes comes, we have to go in and take it out. The risks of it reoccurring and causing drama are far greater than the likelihood that it’s not going to happen again. So now that the risks are far greater, and my health is quite good, and I’ve prepared myself for three years like it’s the best time to have this surgery.

Bill Gasiamis 50:22
And I remember being wheeled into surgery, and they had an intern and an aesthetist who was struggling to find a vein so they can hook me up to the anesthetic and and I was just coaching him through going now you’ll find that you’re alright, just relax. You’ll be calm. Don’t worry. No problem. I’m the best patient you’ve ever had. I’ve prepared myself for all these years to be the best patient you’ve ever had. So you guys aren’t going to do a great job. I’m going to be a great patient. Everything’s going to go fine. I had, I had done, you know, three years of meditation almost.

Bill Gasiamis 51:00
I had done beforehand, I hired a hypnotherapist to come in and take me through the procedure, how my body should respond and react, tell my body what’s going to happen, give it a little bit of an insight, so that when it gets its head cut open, it doesn’t freak out and start bleeding everywhere. I had done everything. So when I turned up, I was expecting an awesome outcome. I was expecting it.

Bill Gasiamis 51:29
There was no other possibility. Yeah, but good, yes. Cheekily, I had prepared for the worst. One of the mottos that I picked up, it’s some dude in the 40s or 50s. Chuck this motto out there. I think he was from the Emirates or somewhere around there, that part of the world said, expect the best, prepare for the worst.

Mark Vega 51:58
Absolutely, absolutely.

Bill Gasiamis 52:00
That was my motto. So I had prepared for the worst, expected the best outcome. I was trying to also coach the my loved ones, into that phase, into that zone, because they are really highly emotional Greeks. So most of the time they’re not holding their shit together. They’re losing their shit about everything. So I had to try and bring everybody with me onto this journey, so that if they’re calm, then I can be calm, and vice versa. And I woke up out of and what I loved about my surgeon was she was so matter of fact also.

Bill Gasiamis 52:40
So she was just my kind of person, like, I need information just right between the eyes. I don’t give a shit what you’re telling me. Don’t make me guess. Just give it to me. And I woke up from surgery. And you know, when you have any surgery, they want you to move your bowels. They want you to go to the toilet as soon as possible. And they asked me, Have I been yet? I said, No, the nurse, who was probably half my size, and real small framed Asian lady, comes, I’ll help you go to the toilet. Well, what we didn’t know then was my left side’s not working.

Bill Gasiamis 53:14
And I got out of the bed on my left side where she was, and I stepped out of the bed. This is not even 12 hours after surgery, and I fell straight to the ground, and I just collapsed in the high what, what do they call that war, that the the high care ward, or something like that bank straight on my ass, screamed, and then, and then, got back up, got back into my bed, and my surgeon came to check up on me, and she said, How’s things? Where are you at? I was groggy as hell, and my family was there, and everybody and they and they said to her, he fell out of bed.

Bill Gasiamis 53:54
She freaked out, and she goes, why? And I said, I can’t feel my left side. And she just goes, Okay, Book him into rehab. That was it. That’s as much information or detail they should go. Just book him into rehab as soon as possible. Seven days later, I was in rehab, and that’s when the next part of that journey started. So not once did I get fearful of the loss of my life, or anything like that. I’d put a lot of things in place to make good all of the people who I’d wronged, you know, to have my business sorted and managed and run.

Bill Gasiamis 54:35
I had made good on, you know, relationships with family, loved ones, parents, everyone had been told they they were loved and all that kind of stuff, you know, my finances were in order. The family was going to be really comfortable. There wasn’t going to be any debt or any crazy things like that that they were going to have to live with if I had to go, Yeah, you know. So it was like, Okay. We are and as now, now that I’m 50, I do contemplate, like, how long my life will be. Sometimes I do contemplate that, and I try and live from the space of like, just get get it done now.

Bill Gasiamis 55:20
Whatever it is that you need to get done that thing that’s on your mind, just get it done, because tomorrow’s not promised, right? So it’s like, Just do it. It’s not a fear of tomorrow not being promised. It’s just a matter of fact thing, like, it’s true, it’s fact. We’re not going to be around forever. No one that’s right, yeah. So just go for it. Just get it done. And sometimes I even think about things like, whatever pain I’m going through or suffering, whatever it’s like I sometimes I even have these weird thoughts, like, like, in 30 years, you know, it’s all going to be over anyway, so don’t worry about it.

Bill Gasiamis 55:54
Like, if you get to 80 and you pass out, like, all that is going to be over. So don’t it won’t matter anyway, so you’ll be all right. You’ll be able to resist it or put up with it for a little bit longer. Just keep going. Don’t worry about and in the last month, I’ve had a really bad left side. My deficits on the left side have been playing up, and they’ve been way more numb. My muscles have been way tighter. There’s been way more pain, and I’m forever kind of wondering what caused it. But I had, I think I had COVID About a month ago, and that’s kind of made it a lot worse.

Bill Gasiamis 56:31
And that gets me down every so often, like when you when you’re flying, and you feel well, and then something comes in and throws a spanner in the works, like you kind of feel, oh, you know, like I don’t like this. Why is that happening again? You know, this whole thing and these feelings that I thought were behind me, they’re not. They’re still there. I tell that part of the story is kind of just to let people know that this guy who appears on the podcast, you know, seems to be doing great and fine and always tells a positive story and all that kind of stuff.

Bill Gasiamis 57:02
Like, there’s still the roller coaster ride. It still happens, you know, this is 12 years in November. It’ll be 12 years for me since I had brain surgery. 2014, it will be 10 years since I had brain surgery, you know. And still, I live with the whole gamut of experience emotions like everything that stroke does. I still live with it and this, let it go and put it in the past. It is in the past.

Bill Gasiamis 57:34
The events are in the past, but what it does to me in the future is still here, and I have to deal with it every single day. And these podcasts, for me, are part of my therapy, but that’s how right much I need them and how necessary they are, and that’s why I love listening to crazy stories for half an hour about what happened to the other person. You know, I can relate, right?

The Impact of Embolic Stroke on Professional Life

Mark Vega 57:57
You did, you did a great job with that, and I’m glad I said then that. You know, for me, I after five years, I was like, I just wanted it to be done, and the reality is that it’s not going to leave. It was a real thing, and it’s still there. And every once in a while, I’m great, so grateful for all this. August 5, I hurt my knee, injured my knee, I love one of my knees, and had injured them in the past many times, but it was, here’s an interesting thing. So when I hit.

Bill Gasiamis 58:29
Move a little closer to your mic.

Mark Vega 58:31
I’m sorry about that. When I injured the knee, I knew for a fact it was so much gratitude, because I realized bill that, okay, this has nothing to do with those strokes, yeah, and it was very, right? It was a really interesting feeling, because I hadn’t been it was a, you know, was a unique injury, and I knew that’s what it was, for sure, right? So I was kind of grateful for that.

Mark Vega 58:55
So of course, rehabbed it and used discipline and all that, and but it’s really, it’s really good to it’s good, really good to accept what is and things are as they not. Those things are as they are, not as you wish them to be or as you want them to be they are. That’s it, right? So true. So embracing that kind of philosophy really helps.

Bill Gasiamis 59:15
That’s awesome. As a as a lawyer, you can understand right? Also probably why some of your colleagues might not tell anybody, because if they rely on their brain to make sure that paperwork is, you know, all the all the eyes are dotted, all the T’s are crossed, and to determine what a piece of law means, or how to apply it, or the rest of it, and if they can’t, if they’re perceived as not being able to do it that’s really going to impact their their their livelihood, and perhaps, you know, their practice, etcetera.

Bill Gasiamis 59:49
And it might put some doubt into people’s minds, the client’s minds, as to whether this, by this person, is capable of, you know, running my my. Business or helping me get through a case or trial or whatever. Can you sort of see that as being legitimate?

Mark Vega 1:00:07
And I’m glad you asked about that, because probably a couple years after, I was curious, I wanted to find talk with other lawyers, because I thought was great, you know, podcast topic, right? I mean, like, this is a transitional period, like after the stroke, you’re still out there practicing. And I know a lot of people did what you did, what I did, like you picked the business back up, and you reconfigure it and and you’re not configuring it to make allocations for whatever deficit you might have, at least I didn’t do that’s what I was doing.

Mark Vega 1:00:37
I just shut it all down until I figured out what’s going on, and then kind of open it back up. Because I wanted to open it back up again, right? But, the lawyers, and I think it’s important to do that a lawyer should be just like I think out people, lawyers who are closeted, alcoholics or addicts or abusers one thing or another, or if you’ve got any kind of addiction, a gambling addiction or whatever, or you have 15 mistresses or whatever, anything, any choices we make right, any choices we make end up impacting can impact a practice.

Mark Vega 1:01:13
And even though most people aren’t choosing strokes, I think choosing to live out loud with them is much better, because if you try to start to live out loud with them, and you can’t, if you notice a deficit, if you notice it, and you’re like, you know that it’s impacting your practice, you have a duty, obligation, responsibility under the law, because you have to remain your level of competency as lawyers. So you there’s, there’s minimum continuing legal education efforts that you mustn’t and undertake throughout the globe.

Mark Vega 1:01:43
Around the globe, all lawyer all lawyer organizations require a minimum amount amount of continuing legal education, right? So that’s for everybody. And when I knocked on the door the State Bar of California, for example, there was no category that was interested in this, and that the American Bar Association level, there is a top level kind of committee thinking about these things. But it’s a it’s a very alarming thing to have to invade the privacy of someone to because you can’t require someone to talk about anything, right? Just like an alcoholic lawyer or not.

Mark Vega 1:02:19
You people, some people talk about it. Some people don’t, but I’m a big advocate for coming out with it, because it is what it is. And I I’ve known lawyers who came under they suffered from strokes and it took them out. I mean, it can’t. They can’t function anymore. They have a significantly less ability, mental aptitude to continue to work the way they used to, right? And so they do something else, but the challenge, I think, is to just keep talking about so that’s why I like this podcast. That’s why I like you, and that’s why I like same thing with running.

Mark Vega 1:02:55
Like I run because and I love the idea of embracing people who want to run after stroke, because not everybody can, right, but a lot of people aspire to do that, even just get movement of some sort, right. But there is something to be celebrated, and your platform is a good one, and it’s growing, and thank goodness for that. But I think there’s big communities of stroke survivors who relate to not just because they’re strokes, but they’re, you know, they’re pipe bidders and they’re lawyers and they’re runners and they’re Fisher persons, and they love to bowl.

Mark Vega 1:03:28
And they’re motorcycle riders and they love snakes, and there’s all kinds of other hobbies and things we do in life. And I think bringing your stroke awareness and your lived life with respect to the stroke, bringing that alongside, don’t hide it is the better approach. It is for me anyway. So I don’t work in a stroke conversation with everybody, but if I’m picking up signals, if you pick up signals from people like you know, it’s a safe conversation, and it’s a good one, and usually it is.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:59
That is, you know what? It is being acknowledged for something that somebody else might have missed. You know you can see, you know that you know the majority of disabilities on in in the western world as a result of stroke. So when you see somebody.

Mark Vega 1:04:15
Really, that’s a legitimate statistic?

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:18
That’s a legitimate statistic.

Mark Vega 1:04:19
Majority of disabilities around the world.

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:23
In the Western world. So when you see somebody who has a deficit, left side, right side, in a wheelchair, limping an arm that doesn’t work properly, you know something like that. Most the greatest cause of disability is stroke, and you know a stroke person, I know a stroke person. All we got to do is, like, walk across them in the street. You know, you know exactly who it is. And because I don’t look like I had a stroke, it’s difficult to stop somebody and go, Hey, you know how you going and all that kind of stuff.

Preparation and Strategy for the 100-Kilometer Run

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:59
But still, when I see people who are, you know, for example, in our central business district selling, we have a magazine that’s a not for profit organization has created this magazine. It’s called the big issue, and it’s and what happens is people who might not be able to work full time or living hard, living on the street, whatever, they have a way to make some income. So they go buy some magazines, or they sell it on the street in their corner. They get allocated a space, and, you know, they they make a little bit of revenue.

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:34
And people just go buy a seven or $8 magazine, and they get and the person selling it gets half the the cost of the magazine. So when you see somebody like that, you can really tell, I can really tell who are the ones who have been injured by some kind of a neurological condition, or have had some kind of a stroke or something like that, it makes the conversation of buying the magazine, more than just I bought the magazine. You know, you can also then go to, how long have you been working like this? You know, what have you been up to? What happened to you?

Bill Gasiamis 1:06:09
You know, you can start a conversation. They’re all willing to share, and what I get from people is who are challenged in some way life, some way, shape or form, because of life. What I get from them all the time is nobody ever stops to talk. Nobody ever has a conversation. Thank they. Thank you simply for just sitting there and talking to them rather than just doing the transaction. You know some people who have got a hat out and ask for money and are looking for a feed, or they’re looking for to raise some money for accommodation for one night, you know.

Bill Gasiamis 1:06:44
In some shelter or something you see, and you chat to them, literally for two or three minutes. They they don’t say anything else, other than thanks for stopping and asking and talking. Man, that’s really interesting to me, that’s what they need, more than the money they’re happy for you to just sit there and have a chat, even if I didn’t buy a magazine from this guy, happy for the chat like it’s just ridiculous.

Bill Gasiamis 1:07:08
How much people just need to have a chat, and that’s so easy to do. And that’s like you, I don’t talk at your pace, but I love the sound of my own voice, right? I love talking. I have no problem with it. So it’s my favorite thing to do, I’ll do it forever. You know what I want to talk about, though, because I’ve had a little bit of experience with this. What I want to talk about is, how far have you run? What’s the longest distance you’ve run so far?

Mark Vega 1:07:41
The longest distance I’ve run so far, the longest distance I’ve run so far is 50k, 50 kilometers, so 32 miles and in a race. And so I’ve run a handful of marathons, and I’m doing another 50k in January, and then a 50 miler in April. And these are as aspirational goals, in a way, because each we have to listen to our body, so that’s, but anyway, that’s the answer.

Mark Vega 1:08:14
That’s the answer the question. I’d love to figure out a way to get to organize some stroke survivors, and I want to call it a stroke run, even if they’re not running at all, even if they’re just dragging their stumps behind them, like getting, you know what I mean, yeah, there’s, there’s something fun and funny about that, I think. And I really, I’ve been working on that for a while.

Bill Gasiamis 1:08:38
In Australia, there’s a stride for stroke. The Stroke Foundation has an event which is called stride for stroke. And you register to do 5, 10, whatever you want. And some people will ride a recumbent bike or a normal bike or whatever. Some people will run. Some people will walk it, whatever it is, and basically you nominate how far you’re going to go and how you’re going to do it, and then you get people to support you, and they raise money for the Stroke Foundation, and it’s an annual event, stride for strokes. It’s really cool. And you could, you know, do something along those lines.

Bill Gasiamis 1:09:11
Now, the reason I asked you about running is because recently, a friend of mine, the guy who wrote the forward in my book, Michael Wilkinson, he comes to me, and he goes, I’m going to go and run 100 kilometers. And he goes to me, would you support me? Would you come along and support me? And I’m like, dude, of course, I’m going to come and support you. What do I need to do? He goes, I want you to be the guy who turns up bit of water, food, you know, my gear.

Mark Vega 1:09:42
He wants it accrue. He wants to be a crew member.

Bill Gasiamis 1:09:44
Yeah, he wants me to be a crew member. I’m like, yeah, man, sure, I can do that, no problem. How far are you kind of run? And he goes 100 kilometers, 62 mile. I’m like ‘You are insane, bro. What the hell are you doing? But yeah, I’m there for sure. Sure, no problem. So a couple of months ago, we went out to a place here in Victoria, where I live, and it’s along the coast, and we, he’s training, he’s preparing. And he says ‘But I’m never going to run 100 kilometers in preparation for this.

Bill Gasiamis 1:10:19
He said his maximum he had, only he had ever run was, I think, 32 mile, 30 miles, something like that. His maximum. Yeah, because so he had done a lot, he had done a lot of running in the days leading up to it, but he had never run a distance further than about 30 Yes, yeah, 32 mile or, I think, 32 miles. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t basically had never gone anywhere near 100k and I’m like, okay, no worries. So what we how does this work? What do we do?

Bill Gasiamis 1:10:48
And he said to me ‘Well, you’re gonna, we’re gonna go there the day before. I’m gonna have my kit, you know, we’ll talk through the strategy, what my expectations are, how I’m gonna where I’m gonna meet you, the timeline, when I expect to be there, all that kind of stuff. I’m like ‘Sweet, no worries. So we go there.

Mark Vega 1:11:05
How many people is going to do this? You by yourself? Are there two crew members?

Bill Gasiamis 1:11:08
Just me, because he couldn’t ask.

Mark Vega 1:11:12
Okay, keep going.

Bill Gasiamis 1:11:13
I had no idea. He couldn’t ask anyone else, because everyone else that he knows would have said, would have tried to, like, don’t do it, man, it’s too far.

Mark Vega 1:11:24
They would have done that. I can’t be bothered ride or die. You’re the guy.

Bill Gasiamis 1:11:27
I’m like ‘Fucking do it, don’t worry about it. And he loves that about me, that’s my attitude. And then he and then he goes. So day before, he’s taking me through that. Okay, so what time are we waking up? Is that 4:30 in the morning? Okay, 4:30 in the morning. Alright, cool, no problem. Are you going to set your alarm? He said ‘Yes, I’m going to also set my alarm for 15 minutes after your alarm, in case something goes wrong and we don’t wake up. I don’t know what. So he’s got a massive bolt, a massive container of pasta that he starts eating at about nine o’clock.

Bill Gasiamis 1:12:04
And he’s going to try and carve up and all that kind of stuff. It’s ridiculous. It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen, pasta with tuna and lentils like terrible, and we get good stuff ‘Oh, terrible. We get up the next morning at 4:30 and he gets his kid on, and we drive down to the first site. And basically my job is to drop him off at the first at the at the start line, and then drive to the next stop and make sure I’m there for him and support him and the rest of it. And it’s like, cool, no worries. I’m in the car and I’m driving to each location. And, you know, he’s done 10 kilometers.

Challenges and Mental Resilience at 50 Kilometers

Bill Gasiamis 1:12:47
Everything is looking great. It’s fantastic. He’s done 20 kilometers. You know, that’s a walk in the park for him. He’s done that heaps of times, everything’s fine. It’s morning. I’m okay. There’s 1000s of other people in this event running everywhere, and then we go 30 kilometers. He’s loving it, he’s killing it, he gets to 40 kilometers, everything’s okay.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:10
Still doesn’t look like a guy who ran 40 kilometers, as far as I’m concerned, like it looks amazing. Gets to 50 kilometers, the same, but at 50 kilometers, and I’m not saying this to do anything to you, hopefully you think differently. At 50 kilometers, he gets to the 50 kilometer mark, which is the star, and stop, and it’s the halfway mark, it’s the start line and it’s the end.

Mark Vega 1:13:38
He turns around and goes back, yeah, out and back.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:41
So it’s a loop, right?

Mark Vega 1:13:44
It’s a whole he keeps going and does it again. It doesn’t go it’s kind of a loop.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:48
You always end up at the same location, right? And then it’s not one massive it’s not one little loop, it’s a massive loop. So you only ever get.

Mark Vega 1:13:58
No, I understand, yeah, 50 is a 50k loop. So you go around with one, and then you either keep doing it twice, or you go around and you go backwards.

Bill Gasiamis 1:14:06
That’s it, and what he starts doing is seeing the people who are finishing at 50, and going, I have to do another 50. And he’s going ‘Oh, my God, they’re finishing. And he’s been running, you know, for four hours already, and then he’s thinking ‘Oh, man, this is going to be a long day. And I’m meeting the same people every time I’m at a stop, I say.

Bill Gasiamis 1:14:06
You’re driving to the next stop, and so are they.

Bill Gasiamis 1:14:36
Yeah, and we’re just chatting and the rest of it. And he’s getting through the run. And by about 10 o’clock at night, he’s got 12 kilometers to go, 10 or 12, something like that. 10 or 12 kilometers to go. And I’m sitting there having a conversation with one of those other crew members for this other person, yes, yes, yes. And the guy goes to me, how are you? How are you? Hey, how are you? Man, I’m going. Man, I am exhausted. I’ve been walking around trying to get this guy over the line for since 4:30 in the morning. It’s 10 o’clock at night, and I’m exhausted.

Bill Gasiamis 1:15:13
Five minutes later, my mate turns up, and he’s just run 89 kilometers or something, and I’m complaining that I’m exhausted. Yeah, and I don’t know how he’s doing it. I don’t know how he’s going to do the last few kilometers. I’ve got no idea. But sure enough, the ability to put the men, to put his mental state in as in the zone of this is not a negotiable. You must complete this run. The analogy, for me, is exactly what we’ve been through with stroke.

Bill Gasiamis 1:15:50
The people who are doing it hard, the people who are doing it tough, there is no you don’t have an option to stop trying, to go for recovery, to stop overcoming your ill health, to stop, you know, finding a solution for the pain to you don’t have a choice. You must continue to do that. And I know that this guy volunteered to put himself in that situation, and we didn’t. But that’s the reality of it is, is that you must continue the struggle, the the the lesson, the whatever it is that you need, you must continue to do that.

Bill Gasiamis 1:16:29
When I asked him ‘Why the hell he would run 100 kilometers. He goes, was to put himself into a state of suffering. That’s what it was about. And the suffering when he was in the state of suffering, the suffering was where he was meant to be, and that attitude towards it was what made it possible for him. So when he found himself suffering at 60, 70, 80, 90, he goes ‘Well, this is exactly what you wanted. This is what you signed up for. So you’ve achieved. You’re in exactly where you want it to be. So just keep going. And he got over the line, and he was just, he was a mess.

Bill Gasiamis 1:17:15
He was probably talking like a stroke survivor. After the first incident, he had no idea what he was doing in the car. He was cramping up, and everything was terrible, and he couldn’t get comfortable. And I took him to his house, his family was overseas at the time, and I took him to his house, and literally just pushed him into I didn’t push him literally into his bed, but basically I just encouraged him that last step of the way to just get into bed. He got into bed and flaked it, and that was it. He goes ‘Just close the door on the way. Close the door. My way out, and I left, and I went home.

The Importance of Crewing and Support

Bill Gasiamis 1:17:50
And it was seeing him. And the amount of people that did it, and we’re all above 50, the people that I saw that were running at the end were all above 50, yeah. And just to see them do that and get through and I’ve overcome whatever demons they had to overcome to get over the line. Just for me, it was like a massive it was like a massive thing for me to just witness it rather than participate in I can apply that to my recovery and to my life and to my troubles, that’s all my suffering. It’s just, I don’t know. It was profound experience for me, and I didn’t even run it.

Mark Vega 1:18:28
I think you just, you should share that story with people, because people don’t know about crewing. They don’t know that thing, that it’s a thing. And the moment you do ever hear somebody who says to you, you know, I’m going to run this long race, I’m going to do 100 miles, I’m going to do it, you gotta your story would allow people to not be afraid of it and not try to talk them out of it, but instead say ‘I’m in. How can I help? Because you’re right. Like crewing is so important.

Mark Vega 1:18:59
Because for the guy, the other thing that happens when you come in, because I had the opportunity to crew. A couple months ago, I got the crew for one of my coaches who was doing 100 mile race. So it was three of us, and we crewed and we went. We could only go like every I forget how many miles, but anyway, it was all night long. Was crazy, was interesting, but it was so satisfying for me, because when you guy came in and he saw you, he had this, there’s a level of expectation. And so when you just see that alone, that’s a jolt of adrenaline and endorphins.

Bill Gasiamis’s Experience with Tony Robbins and Fire Walking

Mark Vega 1:19:30
And you know what I mean? Because it’s another contributor to believing in your brain. It’s like ‘Yep, this is going how it’s supposed to all good, all good. And you can never really guess what the terrain and the weather and other people in your gastrointestinal tract and all that eating all those carbs, whatever that’s before, but later in the day might not be so good, whatever. So he did it. So encourage other people do it right? Because it just so cool. I’m glad you had that experience, I’m sorry.

Bill Gasiamis 1:19:56
So good. One of the first people I interviewed about stroke was, decided to run a marathon with left side foot drop. And you know, you know, had a stroke in her when she was a kid, you know, like, I don’t know, 10 years old or something. Donna Campisi, I think it was very early episodes, and she decided in her 40s she was going to run a first, her first marathon, she trained for ages. She got two coaches, the rest of it, and she did it. 40 kilometers took her ages, like, six hours, seven hours, something like that, with foot drop.

Bill Gasiamis 1:20:33
You know, you’re not, you know you’re not supposed to be able to do that long of a distance would drop, right? So she did it. And that’s the thing. It’s like, if the people listening here are thinking of doing something ridiculously crazy that should not be possible, that shouldn’t really find a way to get it done, it’s going to lift your spirits.

Bill Gasiamis 1:20:52
It’s going to make you feel like you’ve overcome something, and change the way that you see the world like you know what it was for me years ago, before my strokes, I went and saw Tony Robbins in Melbourne, here in Australia. And it’s a four day event, and one of the things that he does at the end of the first day is he primes you to do a fire walk.

Mark Vega 1:21:15
Right, walk on calls.

Bill Gasiamis 1:21:16
Yeah, and I’m like ‘How the hell it’s first thing in the morning day one, and he goes for 12 or 16 hours. Tony Robbins is as energetic as you It’s like he’s crazy the guy. And he goes at the end of tonight, we’re going to walk on calls. Are you insane? I just turned up here. Like, how do you mean I’m going to work on calls? Walker, I’ve never done anything difficult in my life. I’m going to walk on Coles. What are you talking about? And sure enough, it gets you so primed, you get to the front of the line. And I’d say it’s about, it’s about five or six meters this walk on Coles, yeah?

Bill Gasiamis 1:21:55
And I’m like, 15 feet, what? 2020? Feet, something like that, right? And I’m like, everyone’s in line. 1000s of people are in line to walk on calls on these fire pits. There’s a whole range of them. And I’m like ‘Okay, so I’m here. Everyone else is doing it. I’ve gotta do it. And he you go through what he taught you to say and how to breathe and all that kind of stuff. The guy next to you is priming you as well, and he’s getting getting you ready to go.

Bill Gasiamis 1:22:26
And just before I step on, he goes, hang on a sec. He goes, let me go and get some more coals, and he goes and gets a wheelbarrow full of bright red coals, and he throws them on the ground, and he pats it down. And then he says ‘Okay, you can go now.

Mark Vega 1:22:44
Oh my god.

Bill Gasiamis 1:22:45
How is this? And I go for the walk, and sure enough, I get to the other side, and my feet have not burned, and nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s happened to me. The coals were hot. You can feel the the the the hot, the heat like radiating off the coals while you’re standing there getting ready to go, while the guy’s putting fresh coals on. And that was the thing for me, that sort of changed my mind. It’s like you’ve done something that you never expected, that you would ever do, and you’ve managed to somehow will your body over the line and make your body understand what needs not happen.

Bill Gasiamis 1:23:28
You know, you you shouldn’t get burnt here. So do these things to avoid getting burnt, like play this role. You know, I don’t know, change your chemistry. Do whatever you need to do, to not get burnt while you and that’s kind of the attitude that I used when I went into surgery. It’s like, you know, meditation. It was hypnotherapy. Talk to the body, give it some instructions, give it some feedback, tell it what it needs to do, put in two and a half years of effort to get it primed and ready, the whole thing kind of, let’s just it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:24:06
It shows we’re capable of a lot more than we are, you know, and that we can do this. And that’s kind of what I want for my stroke survivors who are listening to this like always, it’s be more than somebody else has ever told you you’re capable of being For God’s sake, like I wrote a book and I have a podcast for God’s sake, like, Do you know what I mean, it’s insane.

Mark Vega 1:24:31
Yes, exactly. Yes, I do, I do know. I mean, there’s a there’s a over as we get older, I suppose we read and get exposed to a lot of different type of philosophies and approaches to life, but it was one of my favorite little sentiments that I pull out the runner’s speed is his own, yet even so, he is helped by being cheered on, that’s from Seneca. Is letters on ethics, one, 9.6. So I find myself as a cheerleader in so many units, in so many verticals, and I have always been that guy, always actually. So when it came to me, I found maybe I was reluctant to cheer, in a way, to cheer for myself, right?

Mark Vega’s Philosophy and Running Goals

Mark Vega 1:25:18
But when when faced with the strokes and after the strokes, I don’t know if you have any, there’s any version of this in you, but it’s not enough for me just to run a marathon. There’s not enough for me just to run one. It’s almost like getting tattoos. Once you have one, you end up getting a bunch, because there’s some addictive element to it, I think, right? And people have talked about that a lot. So for me, it was initially doing New York at all, just doing it at all was blew my mind that I could do it. And then I did say ‘Well, could I do it again?

Mark Vega 1:25:56
And I’m never fast, so I’m never I’m not racing for somebody else. My competition is with myself and just showing up, doing the training and finishing in a way, when you run a race, when you run running races, it’s a little bit like a participation award, because you just have to finish the race and you get the medal. Oh, yeah. All you have to do is finish, you have to win. Yeah, everybody gets a medal. You have to cross the finish line, but you don’t get the medal unless you finish the race, right?

Mark Vega 1:26:26
So the concept of finishing, committing to the training, doing the entire race, getting that medal, that’s very, very satisfying. But for me, there’s something about what you just said, like I in my head I wanted to do crew, or I was. I do a lot of volunteering too. So I volunteered at the 92 mile aid station in a 100 mile race last April. Now for years, I’d already done a lot of long races. I’ve done crazy stuff, I did the tough rock in Boston, which is I dressed in all of my military gear, and I had a 42 pound rucksack on my back, and I hiked a marathon like so I’d done all kinds of crazy things again.

Mark Vega 1:27:10
Not because I was first, just because I wanted to do it, and I finished it, you got it right. So I was at the aid station of this 100 mile race last April, and most of the people are coming finishing, they’re all old. Well, they’re older than me, and at the time, I was 60, yeah, I think it was 60. And the guys coming across the line, there’s like, you know, there’s probably 30 people that finished the hunter, this race, this 100 mile Raven, and the guys coming across the line are all older than me, and so I’m thinking ‘Wait a minute.

Mark Vega 1:27:43
So in that moment, Bill, I was like ‘Oh, wait a minute. Oh, wait a minute. I am not done yet, no way. And these guys, I don’t know what strokes had, it didn’t matter, but I knew me. I’m like, I’m coming back. I’m going to do that honorable race. So that was last April, and I committed to honorable race. And then after that, it got with my coach and the coaches, Ball Coach, like, great. That’s great, but let’s put the body in the right motion, and let’s see what happens. So literally, gotta run a 50k then a 50 miler, then after that, is a 100k That’s 62 miles.

Mark Vega 1:28:14
So my goal is, I want to run the 62k right before I turn 62 so I can run the number of miles I got in my years, right? And then after that, a couple months later, is the 100 miler. And but in each instance, I’m glad you said 100k because I was trying to figure out at 50 miles, they don’t need a crew. And usually, in every race, a long distance race, they usually only let a crew come in. If it’s 100 mile race, they only let crews come in at 100k so you have to finish 62 miles before you can even have a crew come in, right?

The Role of Mindset in Embolic Stroke Recovery and Future Goals

Mark Vega 1:28:46
For some for some miles, for some races, for some races. So this one I did in Wisconsin, they we were able to come in, I think, at 50k so 32 miles, right? They finished first. 32 1/3 of the race. It finished and we got the crew, but it was the same thing, we would drive, and basically all the crew like you did it, just like you did, where all of us were in vans and cars, you know. So we would all show up at the parking lot, all unload our stuff, meet our runner level runner would come passes, pack our stuff up, get back in the car, and drive to the next parking lot or wherever it was, right?

Mark Vega 1:29:20
That’s what you did, yeah? And you do end up meeting and talking with the crew people, the family members and supporters, right? Yeah, very satisfying, very sad. And then when some runners dropped out, I don’t know if you experienced this, yeah, but yeah, there was some runners that I was I bonded not with a runner, but with the crew, right? And so we just talking, and then their Runner was like really in bad way, and so they came in and just finished.

Mark Vega 1:29:47
And so it was interesting, because you don’t get to say goodbye to those people. You just really, like, you just nod and like, you know, whatever you know, you maybe you’ll see them in the next race, right? But it’s just heartbreaking.

Bill Gasiamis 1:30:01
It was such an interesting, profound experience. And like I said, for me, the thing that I’ve got that is, you know, once you’ve got one, you need to keep going. I think it’s the episodes of this podcast. Like, I’m trying to get 1000 episodes. There’s 330 nearly. You know, it’s like, that would be a good thing to get to 1000 episodes. I’m not sure if there’ll ever be anyone who does 1000 episodes of podcasts with stroke survivors.

Final Reflections and Encouragement

Bill Gasiamis 1:30:31
And that’s what I was lacking. You know, I was lacking access to stories, tools, information, and it’s like, that’s what I want to put out. And I get something from every interview, I learned something from everyone who I’ve interviewed. So that’s kind of my thing we are probably at that time when we need to wrap up.

Mark Vega 1:30:59
And what I’d love to ask, I’m just following your lead. It’s your baby. But this is, yeah, this has been great. It’s been good.

Bill Gasiamis 1:31:07
I want to ask the last three questions, which I’ve started asking.

Mark Vega 1:31:12
So I’ll keep the answer short then, I got you.

Bill Gasiamis 1:31:18
What was the hardest thing about stroke for you?

Mark Vega 1:31:25
The hardest thing about stroke for me ended up being realizing that I there was nothing I could do after the first one. We didn’t know what to how to prevent the second one, and so we didn’t prevent the second one, but I was grateful to learn that we really have to pay attention to your body, I had to pay attention to my body. So I’m not in control of many things. Only the impressions that I make are the perceptions I have and the influences that come in. So I guard my impressions and be mindful of my opinions and judgments and how I kind of push those things out in the world.

Mark Vega 1:32:00
For me, that’s all I can control. So I can’t control the body, can’t control the brain, I can’t control these things. And just as you said, you know, our intake, our nutrition, our exercise, sleep, hydration, all those things are physical things that are critically important, but we’re not in control of them. So I guess a hard thing to learn was normally was hard. It was just something I had no idea of. I didn’t know how much I had to appreciate that I’m not very much in control.

Mark Vega 1:32:28
I can just keep bringing my body the right kind of nutrients and and and resources that I can bring to the table. And then be grateful every day. Be mindful and be grateful every single day. No tomorrow is promised for me or anything.

Bill Gasiamis 1:32:43
Yeah, what’s something that stroke has taught you?

Mark Vega 1:32:49
I guess I come I conflated those two questions so stroke taught me that there’s tomorrow’s promise to noone. I need to be right here, right now. I need to be I need to listen, to be engaged and and always be listening, realize that I’m in control of very few things. I am in control of guarding the impressions I make and the opinions and judgments that I form on related to the the opinions that I have, or the impressions of that I take up in the world.

Mark Vega 1:33:22
That’s it so, not really in control of anything else. Everything else is not my business, really, It’s not. So I perfected that. I feel like I’ve taken the strokes of giving me guidance to encourage me, I suppose, on this philosophical path that has ultimately served me very, very well.

Advice for Stroke Survivors and Final Thoughts

Bill Gasiamis 1:33:44
Beautiful. There’s a whole bunch of stroke survivors listening, what would you like to tell them?

Mark Vega 1:34:01
If you plan to build an empire, focus inward. You have that much power and control, it’s not about what is happening to you from the outside. It’s just not we have a lot of control and power within ourselves. How we think about things, we’re in charge of our own opinions, and we can guide our perceptions. And so just as Bill started by saying ‘Go in with that surgery with the right mindset, I’m going to thrive. I’m not only going to survive, I’m going to thrive.

Mark Vega 1:34:37
I have the mental capability. I have the power, the stamina, that education, the love that I’ve received and that I’ve given I am ready for this moment, and I think that’s within all of us. You have the capacity to do that. And so I hope you do and I hope you remember that stroke is a badge of honor, it’s something you can thrive. With it’s like you’ve you’ve gotten a driver’s license in the past, you might have gotten XYZ degrees, you might have had this, XYZ experiences, you might have participated in the military campaigns, or you might have volunteered for this or that.

Mark Vega 1:35:14
And you also had strokes, right? It’s an asset. Stroke is one of your biggest resources. We don’t pull it out all the time, but we know a lot about it, and so the greatest thing you can do is probably listen to the next stroke survivor that comes along. And you’re not going to know them from their artifacts or from their deficits, right? They might look like someone like me, sounds and talks like everything just fine, and it is, but we have to work to get there, and we certainly have to support each other. So thank you, Bill for asking that question.

Mark Vega 1:35:49
Thank you for having me on the episode today too. I love the program, and I’ll tell you this, I will definitely cheer you on towards 1000 we’ll reconnect many times between today and then, because you’ve inspired me, I’m really excited about stroke run, and you gave me a great idea while we’re on the podcast about creating an organization. I want to create a stroke run and event.

Mark Vega 1:36:16
But here’s the difference, I’m going to educate and try to bring people in and let them experience being a crew member. So even though it’s a 5k right, or a 10k whatever it is, you can sign up to run and not just sign up to volunteer, I want to assign you to be a member of a crew the one of the participants. Can you imagine that? How about that? Would you help me in that regard? If I put together something like that? Love that we can talk about that, right?

Bill Gasiamis 1:36:46
I love that not only are you signing up to participate as a rider, runner, walker, whatever, but also you’re volunteering to crew so that a runner, walker, rider, doesn’t have to do it on their own. If they haven’t got anyone to help them.

Mark Vega 1:37:04
That means that’s right, every half a mile, depending how long it is, every half a mile or one mile, when they start wheeling their way, they’re they’re dragging their foot. They are however, they’re being ambulatory to a point where they get to that half mile mark. That person’s crew is right there. It might be comprised of two people, three people, or even one person sometime.

Mark Vega 1:37:26
But that’s what they need, and they are ready to replenish the water, you know, give them a new pair of socks, put a new smile on their face, switch out their hat, give them a shoulder massage, get them ready to get back on the track and get in the race. That sound good, we’re good with that.

Bill Gasiamis 1:37:43
Excellent. Thank you so much. All right.

Mark Vega 1:37:46
We’ll call it the stroke run.

Bill Gasiamis 1:37:48
Call it the stroke run, absolutely, man. Thank you so much. There will be links to Mark’s socials and the website, the stroke run website in the show notes, thank you for joining me, man, and thanks for the conversation, I really appreciate it.

Mark Vega 1:38:04
I’ve loved it, and I God bless you with your editing skills, because this has gone on a long time, but I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. You’re awesome, your energy is perfect. It comes right through the screen, right through the microphone. It’s calming, it’s fun. I trust it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:38:22
That’s a wrap, beautiful. Oh, my God, thanks Mark. Thank you so much, man. Reach out anytime. I’m going to get this up, probably about three or four weeks from now, because there’s a few in the pipeline. And, yeah, just, that’s it, man, just, thank you so much. I really appreciate it, it’s lovely.

Mark Vega 1:38:42
Excellent, man, excellent. I’ll keep in touch. This is a lot of fun. You’re giving me inspiration now, I better get the stroke run website. Really crushing it. Now we’re doing it. I’m going to, I’m going to create the run. I’m telling you do it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:38:53
I’m looking forward to it. You know, I want to know, I might, I might even come and run in the first one.

Mark Vega 1:38:59
Excellent, okay, or at least crew, you can crew.

Bill Gasiamis 1:39:05
Yeah, I can crew. 200% I can definitely crew, whether I run or not.

Mark Vega 1:39:10
But if you are one of our star athletes, wow, that would be pretty cool too.

Bill Gasiamis 1:39:14
Man, you never know. I would love to consider that, yep, absolutely.

Mark Vega 1:39:18
Okay, good. Alright, very well, take care, man, see you later bro. Bye, bye.

Bill Gasiamis 1:39:23
That brings us to the end of this episode with Mark Vega. His story of surviving two embolic strokes and finding strength in adversity is a powerful reminder of the resilience within us all. Mark’s insights into gratitude mindset and the importance of staying active are lessons we can all carry forward in our journeys. Before we wrap up, I’d like to ask for your support in a few simple ways. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please leave a five star review on Spotify or iTunes or like and comment on YouTube.

Bill Gasiamis 1:39:57
Your feedback not only inspires me to keep going, but also helps others find the podcast and join our growing community. And if you’re ready to support the podcast further, consider joining my patreon at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Together, we can continue to share stories that inspire and connect stroke survivors around the world. Thank you for tuning in today.

Bill Gasiamis 1:40:23
Be sure to explore the resources available at recoveryafterstroke.com, and remember to grab your copy of the unexpected way the stroke became the best thing that happened via Amazon or recoveryafterstroke.com/book. I’ll see you in the next episode. Until then, take care and keep moving forward.

Intro 1:40:45
Importantly, we present many podcasts designed to give you an insight and understanding into the experiences of other individuals. Opinions and treatment protocols discussed during any podcast are the individual’s own experience, and we do not necessarily share the same opinion, nor do we recommend any treatment protocol discussed all content on this website and any linked blog, podcast or video material controlled this website or content is created and produced for information or purposes only and is largely based on the personal experience of Bill Gasiamis.

Intro 1:41:15
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Intro 1:41:39
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Intro 1:42:06
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