What occurred on a Sunday morning, the day after Christmas in 1965, was a parent’s nightmare and the catalyst behind a young girl’s dream to fight for the rights of stroke survivors.
That girl was Susan Emery, executive director of Circle of Rights, and an unwitting expert on a malady that is often associated with the elderly. After 56 years, the details of that day are cloudy, but far from erased.
“I was playing a new game with my brother and some friends at the kitchen table, and that is the last thing that I remember,” Emery recalls.
She fell from her chair and landed on the floor, eyes closed and her small frame motionless. Her younger brother thought that she was pulling a prank until she failed to respond to her mother’s coaxing.
For the next two days, Emery slipped in and out of consciousness. The memories are a blur: Medics strapping her onto a gurney, the piercing sound of sirens, and strangers in white lab coats administering tests and wringing their hands as they searched for answers to what happened to this otherwise healthy young girl.
Within hours, doctors delivered somber news: Spinal meningitis. She might not make it through the night. At a second hospital where she was transferred for treatment, they made a startling discovery. It was not an infection that felled little “Susie,” but a blood vessel that had burst in her brain.
Childhood strokes are rare but they do happen, Emery says. It is estimated that the incidence of stroke among those under 15 is 6.5 per 100,000 per year. Approximately half of those are hemorrhagic strokes, or a “bleed.”
“My 10th birthday was spent in the hospital,” Emery says. “I went to school as soon as I was able, and during the first four months, I learned the basics: how to walk, how to talk, and how to move the fingers on my right hand. Classmates helped button and unbutton my coat and carried my books; and teachers taped papers to the desk so I could learn to write with my left hand instead of my right.”
Emery has been in therapy throughout her life for dexterity and aphasia. Despite the challenges, she earned a masters in telecommunications management, worked as an engineer, married her long-time sweetheart with whom she raised three children.
At age 66, Emery continues to have limited use of her right arm and hand and bouts of anxiety when under pressure. But fighting stroke is too important to let nerves get in the way. She founded Circle of Rights in 2008.
Chuck Short, special assistant to the Montgomery County executive, met Emery more than a decade ago when she was working with a local stroke club, and again when she approached the county for funding for Circle of Rights. “Very persuasive, very informed, very articulate, very hardworking,” is his take on Emery and her group. “We awarded them a small grant of about $10,000. I meet with thousands of people each year and I won’t forget my first meeting with Susan. We felt really good about our outreach to our diverse population, but I was quite impressed by Susan’s strong commitment to education and prevention, and her deep interest in meeting the needs of everyone in the community. We’re lucky to have them.”
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