Exclusive | I was healthy when I had a stroke at 23 my scary symptoms and what doctors think caused it

Ann Fulk, 24, has had her fair share of hospital visits for someone her age. She was in a serious car accident in 2022 that shattered her bones, resulted in 10 surgeries and confined her to a wheelchair for six months. “It was very traumatic,” Fulk told The Post.“I was an athlete at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and I was shadowing a vice chancellor.

I was doing very well in all my classes.And — boom — it was all taken away within a second.”Through sheer willpower, she managed to finish her degree and went on to graduate school at Loyola University in Chicago. As a mental health therapist, she used the healthy coping strategies she knows to not let the accident break her — but she also figured the tragedy gods were done with her. “I kind of thought that would be my only major medical, unlucky event for my whole entire life,” she said. Not so much.On April 3, 2024, she went to work, then played a little basketball at the gym with a friend before they both went back to her place.

There, she poured herself a small glass of wine, put some music on and chatted to her friend while doing the laundry.That’s when it happened — “I dropped to the ground,” she said. Her friend began panicking, but she thought it might have just happened because she hadn’t eaten enough that day. He gave her a granola bar — at which point she had another unpleasant realization.“I couldn’t even eat the granola bar,” she said.“I was spitting it out.

I couldn’t eat on the left side of my mouth.” Understandably, her friend wanted to take her to a hospital but — given her history — she was reluctant to go and thought if she just went to bed she’d be fine in the morning.At the insistence of her friend, they called 911.At this point, she was completely paralyzed on her left side. “He carried me into my bed and I could not use the left side of my body.

It was fully numb,” she said. “My right side, it was almost convulsing, as if I w...