Survivor Stories

Meet Charlotte

Admin — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 13:30:00 GMT

Charlotte has always led a busy life, filling her days caring for her family, including her 12 grandchildren. When her health began deteriorating and she experienced transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), she knew she faced an increased risk of heart attack or stroke.

Meet Ed

Admin — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 05:00:00 GMT

Edward Wong, MD, found himself in an unexpected situation. “I was sitting in front of the television, and I began having numbness on the right side of my face,” he said. His medical training kicked in as the numbness spread to his right hand and leg.

He immediately recognized the symptoms of stroke and knew he needed to act quickly. “It’s crucial to get to the hospital within a few hours of the stroke onset,” he says. Within minutes, Dr. Wong was in an ambulance headed to the hospital.

Meet Laura

Admin — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 04:00:00 GMT

One year after having a stroke, Laura was celebrating her recovery. “I stood up in church and told everyone, I’ve almost made a year,” she says.

A few days later, Laura had an abscessed tooth. She was also feeling weakness in her left side and struggling to find words. Laura asked her husband to take her to the emergency room, thinking it might be related to her tooth. The doctor walked in and told her she had had another stroke. Laura was devastated.

“My life was turned upside down,” she says. “The first night, I cried the whole night.”

When she met with her neurologist, he could see that she felt defeated. “I told him I just wanted to feel normal again,” says Laura. “The next thing I knew, his office called me, saying, ‘We want to sign you up for Kandu.’” She told them she’d do anything and immediately signed up for the program.

Meet Katherine

Admin — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 04:45:00 GMT

When Katherine started graduate school two years ago, she knew that managing work, marriage, and school would be difficult. But she had no idea she would also be recovering from a stroke and subsequent brain surgery.

“Pain came out of nowhere,” Katherine says. “I was at work one day, and all of a sudden, I went from being fine to having the worst headache of my entire life.” She thought she was just having a bad migraine.

Her husband took her to the emergency room and things escalated quickly. “It went from zero to a thousand extremely fast,” Katherine says. “It was really, really scary.” In the emergency room, doctors told her she was having a brain bleed. Katherine was taken by a life flight helicopter to a nearby hospital for treatment, where she was introduced to Kandu as she began her recovery.

Meet Tracy

Admin — Fri, 31 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT

Tracy, an opera singer, artist, and activist based in San Francisco, never let anything slow her down. Then, at a pivotal point in her career, she had a stroke. “I was about to make my debut at the Metropolitan Opera,” she says. “Everything was complicated by the fact that I had a huge career milestone rapidly approaching.” Tracy needed to jumpstart her recovery in order to rehearse for her debut in New York, just six weeks after her stroke.

"There's such a big gap when you leave the hospital, when you leave the rehab center, you go from this huge team of people to being expected to be home and to just figure it out yourself– and that is really frightening."

Meet Jason

Admin — Sat, 18 May 2024 01:15:00 GMT

Jason is a former Hall of Fame College baseball player who centered his life around sports. In his free time, he played golf and hockey. He also owned a small business.

Then life took an unexpected turn.

While at work one day, Jason got dizzy after leaning over to pick something up off the floor. Later, Jason talked to his son over FaceTime, and Jason froze. He couldn’t get words out. His son and his son’s mom stayed on the phone with him. His co-workers called the paramedics.

The paramedics gave him the option of going home. “They said, ‘Jason, you don’t have to go with us because you passed all of our tests; you can just go home and rest,’” he recalled. Jason planned on going home, but his son and son’s mom knew something was off, so they picked him up at work and took him to the hospital.

Later that day, Jason received a startling diagnosis: He had had a stroke. His hospital stay was difficult, and he started developing memory loss after his stroke. “I couldn’t say my name. I couldn’t remember my birth name or my birthday,” he says. “So it was hard.”

Meet Bob

Admin — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 05:00:00 GMT

Bob and his wife Kathy were driving home from lunch when he suddenly felt disoriented. They pulled the car over. His son’s girlfriend, who had joined them for lunch, drove them home.

Then, Bob lost his balance when they exited the car and had trouble speaking. They decided to call 911. Paramedics took Bob to the emergency room, where he learned he had a stroke.

Kathy reflects, “It was a gorgeous day and we had no feeling that anything wrong was going to happen. And then something did– and now we’re feeling very vulnerable.”

Meet Cheryl

Admin — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 22:00:00 GMT

When Cheryl’s right leg suddenly felt numb on a visit to her daughter, she thought it was just asleep.

“I started walking around,” she says. “But it wasn’t going away.” Later that day, Cheryl fell while walking from the car to her daughter’s apartment. Knowing she had likely broken her foot, Cheryl’s daughter urged her to go to the emergency room.

At Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital, when the doctor mentioned a stroke code, Cheryl realized that the numbness in her leg might have been the symptom of a stroke. “It was very traumatic,” says Cheryl when she thinks about her time in the emergency room, “but I had the best team in the hospital.”

She is grateful to her daughter for persuading her to go to the emergency room. Without her, she might not have gone to the hospital at all, she says. “She’s my hero.”

Meet Tony

Admin — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 20:00:00 GMT

For years, Tony managed restaurants and directed busy kitchens. "Cooking is one of my biggest passions," he shared. "My outside life could have been a mess, but in that kitchen, everything was under control, and that's my happy place."

During the summer of 2022, Tony, a chef in Los Angeles, was working his shift at a local restaurant when it suddenly became challenging to do routine tasks. His balance and coordination were affected. He tried to shrug it off and keep working, but he knew something was wrong and ultimately decided to go to the hospital.

"There's no way to plan for having a stroke, and when it happens to you, it's one of the scariest things," said Tony.