Eddie Denson and his girlfriend, Sarah
LASTAUGUST when Eddie Denson, 43, of Naples, woke up in the middle of the night, it took him a while to understand what was going on. The ICU nurse had experienced a regular day, if you can call working full-time, going to school full-time and performing his clinical hours “regular.” Already an R.N., Eddie had gone back to school to get his A.R.N.P. degree to allow him to become a Nurse Practitioner. That day, he had taken his final exam and was looking forward to boosting his career. “I was feeling a little tired, but being tired was noth- ing new for me,” he laughs. He and his girlfriend had dinner as usual. He told her he wasn’t feeling great, though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what was wrong. “We went to bed around 10:30 p.m., doing our normal routine, checking our phone, social media,
that kind of thing.” He went to sleep around 11:15 p.m. “Then, out of nowhere, I woke up,” Denson says. “I remember it was 2:02 a.m. My right arm was asleep. I tried to sit up and realized I couldn’t sit up. I tried to move my right leg and couldn’t. That’s when I started to panic, and right away I knew I was hav- ing a stroke.” He continues: “I tried to yell but it was all slurred. My girlfriend finally woke up. I said, ‘I’m having a stroke,’ but she couldn’t understand what I was saying. So she turned the lights on and saw that my face was drooping and then she understood what was happening.” It’s understandable that his girlfriend would take a minute to realize that the situation might be a stroke. Eddie was just 43, exercised regularly and was other- wise a very healthy person. But strokes in younger people do happen, says
23 APRIL - JUNE 2019 NAPLES HEALTH
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