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A single mother in the UK is finally learning how to walk again after suffering a massive stroke, caused by smoking while taking birth control pills.
32-year-old Louise Palfreyman, from Norwich, is warning others not to smoke on the pill after she developed an enormous clot in her brain that left her unable to do just about anything.
“Our lives have completely turned upside down. One day I was fine, and the next I was in hospital, away from my daughter and unable to do anything for myself,” she said, The Daily Mail reported. “I had to be bathed and taken to the toilet – it was awful. I felt like a toddler again.”
Palfreyman has been taking birth control pills since she was 15-years-old because they’ve helped subside her painful periods each month.
It wasn’t until she switched contraceptive pills about a year ago, however, that Palfreyman began suffering debilitating migraines.
The headaches eventually got so bad that Palfreyman would often vomit and have to lie in her bedroom with the lights off until the pain passed.
Although she tried consulting with her doctor numerous times, nobody ever linked Palfreyman’s migraines to her birth control.
Then, in June 2015, she suffered a deadly stroke that left her partially paralyzed.
“I woke up with a migraine and went downstairs to get some painkillers. I felt a shooting pain behind my eye and my vision began to go blurry. I thought, ‘Oh no, this is going to be a bad one,’” Palfreyman recalled. “I began to feel cold all down my left-hand side. It was like someone had tipped cold water on me, then I collapsed.”
Once she was rushed to the hospital and examined, Palfreyman finally discovered the truth: She had a stroke.
The blood clot on her brain had to be surgically removed, but doctors couldn’t figure out what could cause something so severe in such a young woman.
After a series of blood tests and scans, it became clear that Palfreyman’s stroke had probably been caused by smoking on the pill.
“Nobody had ever explained it to me during any of the yearly reviews I attended while on the pill, and doctors never suggested taking me off it when I began experiencing migraines,” she said. “You don't tend to question doctors, so I didn't think I had anything to worry about.”
Although she’s already quit smoking, Palfreyman is still relearning how to walk and control the left side of her body.
Now that she’s finally on the road to recovery, Palfreyman hopes her story can raise awareness about the dangers of smoking on the pill.
“If my story can save just one person from going through what I have, I'll be happy,” she said.
