Actress Aubrey Plaza, known for her role in Parks and Recreation, shared her experience of having a stroke at the age of 20, discussing the moment her brain began to ‘malfunction’.
At 40, Plaza, who also appeared in White Lotus and Agatha All Along, described the stroke as a time when she felt detached from her own mind.
In a conversation with NPR, Plaza recounted the initial signs, stating she realized something was amiss when she briefly ‘blacked out’.
She explained: “I remember there was just like a really loud kind of sound happening. And I brought my hands to my throat, and I was kind of making like an ah (ph) sound because I couldn’t talk because the blood clot was in my language center of my brain.
“So I had expressive aphasia instantly, which means that if you’re talking to me, I could understand what you’re saying in my mind and understand how to respond. But I couldn’t actually get it out. I couldn’t actually talk.”
In a September interview with Howard Stern on his SiriusXM show, Plaza disclosed that the stroke temporarily left her paralyzed, calling the ordeal ‘wild’.
Additionally, a certain realization dawned on her when the paramedics arrived.
“I lost my motor skills really briefly. The freakiest thing was I forgot how to talk,” she said. “But oh God the thing that you realize when you have a stroke or that some people might realize is that like you start to understand that your brain is not you because there was me and then there was my brain that was malfunctioning.
“And that was the moment that I had where I went, ‘Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, how am I conscious? That my brain can’t say these words, when me as me knows what the answer is?’
“Because the paramedics were asking me questions and me as me, whatever that is, soul me, higher me, whatever me is, was going, ‘The answer is yogurt’.
“They’re going, ‘What you have for breakfast?’ And I’m going in my head, say yogurt brain […] but I couldn’t do it.”
Despite the ‘terrifying’ nature of the event, Plaza realized there was ‘more going on’ as she observed her brain’s dysfunction.
Once at the ER, Plaza waited approximately ‘two hours’ before being assessed, despite ‘physically looking fine’, she couldn’t speak or write and was ‘confused’.
Fortunately, after being moved to a stroke unit and undergoing cognitive therapy, she began to recover.
If you’ve been affected by the topics discussed in this article, you can find more information and support from The American Stroke Association on their website.