Ohio teen Alexis “Lexi” Eddy was at her after-school job when she suddenly lost control of the left side of her body
She texted her friends a photo through Snapchat, and one replied that her face was drooping
She was rushed to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a stroke before being treated at the Cleveland Clinic for a blood clot that traveled through a hole in her heart
March 10, 2024, started as a “completely normal” day for Alexis “Lexi” Eddy.
The 18-year-old from Randolph, Ohio, went to school as usual, where she was “laughing, having a good time” with friends. She then headed to her job, where she works as a dietary aid in a nursing home. She kept the windows down as she drove to work. “It was a nice day,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively.
The first indication that something was wrong, she recalls, was when she tried to uncap a pen. “That should have been my first sign. I was struggling with my left hand to pull that cap off.”
Once she did, “this big wave — a lightheadedness — hit my body. Then I couldn’t speak. Every time I try to talk, it’s just complete gibberish.” Lexi thought she was “just lightheaded” and grabbed her water bottle, but “when I took the drink of water, all the water poured out of my mouth, like immediately went all over me.”
Melissa Eddy
Alexis ‘Lexi’ Eddy had a stroke while at her after-school job.
A coworker grabbed paper towels to help her clean up. But at that point, “I couldn’t feel my left hand at all. I couldn’t get it to move. It just moved randomly on its own and I didn’t want it to.”
Confusion set in, she tells PEOPLE, and that’s when “I fell out of the chair for the first time.”
Lexi picked up her phone to send a photo to her friends on Snapchat. “One asked me what was wrong with my face,” she said. “I got asked if I was having a stroke and why my face was drooping.”
At that time, I didn’t think anything of it ‘cause I didn’t know the complete symptoms of a stroke.” She told her boss that she would be fine to go back to work and just needed a second to rest. “I put my phone down and fell out of the chair again.”
As her coworkers helped her back in the chair and tried to figure out what was happening, Lexi explains, “I didn’t know what to do, so I was like, I’ll just call mom. She always knows.” When she started dialing the office phone, she fell a third time. Medical staff at the nursing home told her to stay on the ground as they called for an ambulance.
Melissa Eddy
Alexis ‘Lexi’ Eddy shared a photo when she was loaded into an ambulance.
Lexi’s friend called her mom to let her know what was going on. Melissa Eddy, an occupational therapist, listened as her daughter’s friend described the symptoms. “She explained to me that the left side of her face is drooped, she can’t talk, she can’t feel or move her left side. Immediately in my head: Stroke,” Melissa tells PEOPLE.
Melissa met her daughter at the local hospital. “As they’re taking her out, I’m kind of doing my own little assessment. I could see her face clearly. I asked her to squeeze my hand and there was nothing there. So then in my head, I was just like, ‘Crap, this is a stroke. Oh my God.’ “
The hospital confirmed it was a stroke and the teen was rushed to the Cleveland Clinic. “Once we got there, it was like, game on,” Melissa tells PEOPLE.
Melissa Eddy
Alexis ‘Lexi’ Eddy had a stroke, caused by a hole in her heart.
Lexi’s dad Brian rode with her to the Cleveland Clinic and was trying to keep her calm. But once she arrived, “There were like 15 people who all just swarmed into my room and like my dad wasn’t there. All of a sudden he was gone.”
“I can’t comprehend all of it and I just start sobbing,” she says. “There are people saying, ‘Push the medicine through! Push the medicine through now!’ When I started sobbing, that’s when it all just really hit me.”
The medicine, her mom tells PEOPLE, was to break up the blood clot in her brain that had caused the stroke.
As Dr. Yousef Mohammed, Lexi’s stroke neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic, explains, “Any delay in the treatment of these patients will cost the patient tremendously.”
Melissa Eddy
Alexis ‘Lexi’ Eddy shared an update before going in for her CT scan.
The doctor told the family that if the medicine didn’t break up the clot, she would need brain surgery. But a CAT scan showed that the treatment was successful, and “within probably an hour after having that medication, she did start to regain some feeling and movement and speech back, and then progressively, she’s continued to do better since,” Melissa says.
The teen spent four days in the hospital.
Since the stroke, Lexi’s been working on gaining movement back in her hand so she can do simple things like put her hair into a ponytail.
She learned the stroke was caused by what Dr. Mohammed calls a “normal variant” that impacts up to 25% of the population. It’s a hole in her heart — the medical term is a patent foramen oval, or PFO. He explains that when “we have a young patient like Alexis, 18-year-old with no other cause except the hole, and we have this score called RoPE [Risk of Paradoxical Embolism] score telling us that there’s 88% chance that the stroke is caused by the hole, then we have to close it.”
Lexi explains that “The blood clot was originally on the right side of my heart, and my hole in my heart had opened at the perfect timing for my blood clot to go over to my left side, which shot [it] up into my brain.”
Melissa Eddy
Alexis ‘Lexi’ Eddy was able to make it to prom.
Before undergoing surgery to close the hole, she was able to go to prom. The teen, bound for Kent State in the fall, tells PEOPLE, “I’m very excited to put it behind me, but I’m also not going to forget what it has taught me.”
“Life is very short, so dwelling over the hard moments isn’t worth it, “ she says. “If I were to die tomorrow, would I be happy with what I’ve done with my life? I’m living life with a purpose and trying to help people and just being the best person I possibly can be. And if I were to die tomorrow, would I die happy? And the answer would be yes.”
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