PROVO, Utah — May is Stroke Awareness Month, an initiative aimed at helping people recognize the signs and symptoms of strokes.
While high blood pressure and age are the main risk factors for stroke, they can affect anyone, as evidenced by 17-year-old Utahn Ceilidh McSeveny, who survived a stroke at a young age just a few months ago and is bravely recounting her experience.
Think of your favorite thing, the thing that gets you up in the morning and the thing you dream about when you lie your head on the pillow at night. For Ceilidh, that thing is dance.
"Every time I think about it, my stomach fills up; I just get so happy," she said. "I can't throw a ball to save my life, so I don't know what I'd do. I'm not good at school, so I don't know what I would do.”
Since she was a young girl, Ceilidh has not only enjoyed dancing but has also been exceptionally good at it.
"Just being so committed and having so much passion really helps you get where you want to go," she expressed.
Watching her flourish has meant everything to her parents, Mark and Jerry.
"She has wanted to dance since she was three," Jerry shared, adding, "It’s great to watch your child do what she absolutely loves to do, to homeschool her for the amount of hours that she actually puts into what she loves to do.”
Dancing had become a way of life for Ceilidh, with never a moment's rest.
"I was at the studio. I had everything planned, and I was so busy, going and going and going. I never once thought this could happen," she said.
However, that all changed on the morning of February 8. "It was a typical Saturday morning," Mark recalled. "Sasha, her coach, had sent a text late the night before asking if we could have an early practice; otherwise, we would have let her sleep in.”
Mark said they were noticing she was starting to act a little funny. Coming over to look at her, Jerry could see that the left side of her face had started to sag. From that moment, "I knew how important it was to get her to the hospital," Jerry said.
They raced from their home in Genola to Mountain View Hospital in Payson, realizing that Ceilidh needed treatment right away.
"It was the scariest thing as a parent to witness," Mark said. "Knowing something is tragically wrong and not knowing what it is, but needing to get somewhere for help."
"I thought she was going to die," Jerry said. "Watching her, I was just petrified.”
Doctors quickly realized Ceilidh was having a stroke, so they picked up the phone and called St. Mark’s, another hospital in the MountainStar System, to see if they could admit her quickly. Within minutes, a helicopter arrived.
"To watch the helicopter fly in front of you, and there's nothing you can do to hold her hand and tell her she's going to be okay— I hope I never have to feel that again," Mark recollected.
Dr. Kristofer J. Mitchell, the trauma surgeon on call, received a call from administration asking if he would be comfortable admitting a 17-year-old, saying, "We need to get her here as soon as possible."
As fate would have it, Mitchell realized the patient was his own daughter's best friend. His daughter, Vivian, and Kaylee dance together every day and are inseparable, so he knew it was time to get to work.
"I remember getting off the Life Flight. A whole team was there and said, 'Hey, Kaylee. We're your team for today. We're going to help you right away," Ceilidh recalled.
"She gets there, looks up, and says, 'Oh, I know you. You're Vivian's dad,'" Dr. Mitchell explained.
Ceilidh remembers, "At that moment, I felt this incredible ease because I knew my parents weren't there.” She went on to say, "I felt at ease, and after that, everything went smoothly for me. I wasn't nervous anymore; it just felt calm.”
Mitchell immediately went to work along with the rest of Ceilidh’s team because every minute that the clot remained in her brain meant that 1.9 million brain cells were dying.
So why did the stroke happen? Every person is born with a small hole in their heart between the left and right atria. Sometimes that hole never closes. The technical term is a Patent Foramen Ovale, or PFO. It is estimated that 1 in 4 people worldwide have a PFO that never closed, which can increase the risk of a stroke.
"I always thought I was invincible, like that would never happen to me," Ceilidh shared. "Then I woke up in the hospital, and when they told me, 'You just had a stroke,' it was life-changing."
Thankfully, from the time her parents noticed the symptoms to when she was safely out of surgery was around two-and-a-half hours, a window of time, doctors agreed, saved her life and left her with no lasting complications.
"I'm just so grateful they were there and willing to help me. They noticed right away and were smart enough to say, 'Okay, let's go to the hospital,'" Ceilidh expressed with tears in her eyes, "If any one of those hadn't happened, this would be a different conversation," she notes.
From the doctors at both hospitals making the right calls, to her parents acting fast, to even the text that woke her up early, every miracle led to her spending only a few days in the hospital.
But there was one more miracle in her, as just a few weeks later, she was back doing what she loved.
"Dance has helped me through so much, and not being able to do it would have taken a big toll on my life," Ceilidh explained. "That's just been me.”
One more update came Thursday as Ceilidh returned to competition for the first time at the Provo Convention Center, in her solo routine, just a few months after her stroke, and took home the silver medal!
Watch: Highlights from Ceilidh's performance
While this story could have turned out very differently if everything had not gone right, Ceilidh’s journey of dancing through life now has a new meaning.
"I feel like I've had so many miracles that I'm still alive today. I don't need to grieve over it; I'm here for a reason, and I need to live it up. Sadly, it happened, but it changed my life for the better," she admitted.
Her story is a testament to knowing the right thing to look for when someone is having a stroke.
The phrase “Be Fast” is often used as a quick way to remember what to look for:
- B: Balance - If the person is feeling off balance and can’t stand up
- E: Eyes - If someone's is having loss of vision or ability to focus
- F: Face - One side of the face is drooping or the person is only able to smile on one side
- A: Arms - someone isn’t able to lift their arms above their head
- S: Slurred Speech - forming complete sentences gets difficult or words don’t come out clearly
- T: Time - The most important, because time is brain.
