She was on call and it was a busy week. Angelica Soberon-Cassar, Medical Director at Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Greenville, was used to tension and the busy schedule of an active physician. She didn’t expect to become the patient.
“I am a rehabilitation physician, but I’m also board certified in brain injury, which encompasses strokes,” she says.
Now more than ever, Soberon-Cassar wants women to know about heart health, their risk, their symptoms and their family history.
“I did have a small stroke in February (2023),” she says. “I had a carotid dissection on the right side and then had symptoms of really not knowing where my arm was in space. I was actually here at the hospital speaking with a patient and felt electricity going down my left arm and it went away.”
Soberon-Cassar says she has neck issues and has had sciatica, so she thought what she felt might be related to that.
“Then I just felt my arm was kind of wandering away. I’d had a headache on the right side since Tuesday and then on that Friday was when I started having the left-side symptoms – the electricity, some numbness and changes on that left side. I went to the hospital, and they found it, so I’m on aspirin for life. I didn’t expect that at my age, but it can happen.”