I also had a ‘small’ stroke a month ago which has left my right leg weak and slight lack of coordination in my right arm. I realise how much worse it could have been but it is still very significant. Last week my son and his family came to stay from Australia and having been progressing well and behaving reasonably normally I am suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue and unable to cope with the demands of small children which saddens me. Life is not the same however much I want it to be.
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Robbie - I think you may now answered your own question ‘What is a “small” stroke’ 
I think I have a better understanding of the differences and a little (I nearly said small) niggle about a TIA.
For now and for my own “peace of mind” I shall think of a TIA as a min-stroke (of the clot type i.e. ischaemic) - actually it’s in the name transient ischaemic attack. The thing about a TIA is that you may or may not be aware that it is happening or even it may have happened e.g. in your sleep.
The thing about a TIA is it is short-lived. So from this, I am seeing this as a stroke happens, a part of the brain gets damaged (a little part) but the area of damage is small enough and there is enough undamaged brain cells in the vicinity that can be used to quickly repair the damage - this is the brain re-wiring itself so quickly you don’t even notice it.
Further, the damaged area is so little that the clean-up (mopping up as @EmeraldEyes calls it) happens so quick that there are no signs left at the scene of the crime. Here is the best bit, and the thing that used to bother me - what happens to the dead cells? Now I believe the answer is that as with any other damage, the body cleans and repairs itself and so the little soldiers come marching in, pick up the dead cells leaving only the repaired and possibly slightly “weaker” new connected area in place and normality kind of resumes.
But, because the new connections might not be as robust as the original, there may be signs of weakness e.g. speech stutter or walking or whatever but because it is weak it might be mistaken for other things and hence the TIA does not get picked up and diagnosed as a stroke. Having done its job the TIA goes away but may come back again.
The TIA acts as a warning though it may not necessarily be effective since it happens so quick and the clean up, the body being super efficient, leaves no detectable signs.
Only for myself, I will take TIAs as may or may not be diagnosed/detected (accurately).
Either way, once flagged you have a choice to either take preventative action or not. This choice is there at all times e.g. from the time when a GP suggests you are at risk of heart attack or stroke because of high blood pressure or high cholesterol levels etc.
I think I’ll leave it at that and I thank you Robbie for giving me the opportunity to think something through.
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G’day @sueBT and welcome to the community.
If it’s any consolation, you are probably in a good place right now. What you are experiencing right now i.e. the fatigue, feeling overwhelmed and being unable to cope with demands of small children is part of your recovery from the stroke. I’ll keep this brief because I know there are more eloquent posters with first hand experience of this who will come by soon and explain and offer you more support.
Your brain is repairing itself and has a reduced capacity due to the damage caused by the brain and as a result whilst you were ticking along fine post-stroke before your family came over from Australia, the brain is now under stress due to the increased demand on it. I think that may be why you are feeling fatigued, overwhelmed etc. This is nothing to worry about as it may be short term until you adjust to the new environment and secondly the brain is repairing itself and so is getting stronger and so the capacity will likely increase allowing you to cope better.
It’s true, life is not the same, but it should get better and you never know it may soon be as good as you might want it to be.
Wishing you all the best.
Namaste|
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Hi @SueBT & welcome to the community. Sorry to hear of your stroke. Although strokes come in different shaoes and sizes they all have a bug impact on us & those around us.
I am sure it was lovely to see all your family from Australia but I am not surprised you are now plagued with fatigue. Your brain is still very much in repair mode & all that stimulation will probably have overwhelmed it. The good news is though you will improve over time & fatigue will become less. Demands of small children may not be possible right now but they will be again. It is about managing your activity levels right now and building them up gradually. If you have a big event coming up then rest the day or 2 before & for a daybor so afterwards. You will find what works for you. It will be trial and error initially.
If you have any questions please ask away. Someone will come along to help.
Best wishes
Ann
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Or, as my stroke consultant said, it doesn’t matter if it was small or mini or a TIA, they’re all strokes and that’s what matters! And yes, it could happen again. So you have to take them all seriously and take every precaution necessary to at least reduce the risk. And if only I could speak that day, I would have thoroughly picked his brains at the time 
Lorraine
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Hi @SueBT and welcome 
You could say your brain is currently in ICU! There’s specific guidelines for visitor, particularly children, if they’re even allowed.
You wouldn’t expect someone who’s just gone through major open heart surgery or car crash to go out all night clubbing it just a month later, would you.
But that is what you are asking of your brain, just a month after going through a major life threatening event…no matter how small you might think it is. Just because we have no visible wounds doesn’t mean they are not there. Unfortunately your brain needs lots of quiet time with one or two visitors at a time, for an hour or two. Because your brain is just not running at full capacity and it won’t do for quite some time yet.
It’s doing major mop up and repair work and trying to run basics functions all at the same time. Just can’t cope with lots of visitors, particularly children, they’re way to noisy and over active. The first 6mths are crucial for recovery and getting things back up and running as best it can.
So I can appreciate why you are so overwhelmed with having your family here. It’s a shame it couldn’t be put off for another months when your brain is a little more recovered and the fatigue more manageable.
Lorraine
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Thank you for all these reassuring replies. I wish I had been able to postpone my family’s visit but on the other hand they have bought a lot of fun and motivation to get myself better. I must just take more time out and heed your advice about giving the brain time to heal.
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Interestingly, some time after the stroke I had, my partner went in for an MRI which showed, that a few years before mine, that she too had had a stroke. I compared MRI scans and her damage in the occipital lobe area was larger than my scattered infarcts , left and right of the cerebellum, yet her only apparent symptom was fatigue, thus she never suspected she had had one. My symptoms, however, were much more pronounced.
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Hello Rupert - I did not know that the MRI can show when the stroke occurred. From what you say your partner’s MRI showed a stroke had occurred a few years before yours - do we know how many years? How precise is the dating?
How long had your life been unaware she had had a stroke and what led to the MRI scan being done?
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They can date infarcts roughly due to the saturation of whites/greys. It is approximate but I recall the day she had it. She had been driving in the car and was talking to a friend at the same time on the phone, aye not the thing to do, but noticed her sentences were not coming out right and felt weakness. She pulled aside, gathered herself together and drove on. That was the suspected day. At the time, both of us were ignorant of strokes as so much as the cliche of it being something suffered in later years. It was discovered after she had a prolapsed spinal disc seven years later, and was slowly becoming paralysed and had had emergency surgery. Funnily enough, it took for her to have been told she had had a stroke to get to grips with my own in hindsight, sometimes empathy requires brethren.
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Hi @kimbers94 sorry to hear about your stroke. You will probably find there are lots of us on this site that have anxieties and panic attacks, I for one have used many different types of stress/anxiety relief books/CDs etc., over the years and all help a little. The one I have found useful at the moment is a phone app called ‘AURA’ and this is what I use every day now and it does seem to help, but obviously, it’s all down to us being individuals and what works for one might not work for another. I hope you get to grips with your anxieties soon, take care, John aka Bert
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My, my. I never realised what an interesting question this would turn out to be. And still quite confusing. The phrase ‘a small stroke’ seems to be full of ambiguities.
(And @ManjiB is quite right that in the end it seems I am answering my own question - though with a LOT of help, as people add from their own knowledge and experience.)
But @Rups (or Rupert?), do in understand you right that the doctors called what happened to your wife a stroke, and not a TIA, even though its effects seem, from what you say, to have been quite temporary?
Is that then because they found such a substantial (large) area of the brain affected, even if not a substantial event in its consequences?
And I’m intrigued to hear that the mixture of white and grey matter can be used as a form of dating of the original event. Can you say anything more on that?
The reason I ask is that my doctor’s letter says that my own stroke was in the white matter, in an area that transmits messages from the brain to the body, and that seemed to make sense of my symptoms. The white matter, the myelination, is what speeds those messages, so that damage there will delay messages, which would make sense of why my balance is now still quite impaired - it’s slow to get the messages - and that’s what I need to work on now, with balance exercises from my physio. But if the extent of white matter damage is as much or more a measure of the length of time SINCE the event, then I have a whole different story to concoct now.
So, any more light you can shed on this would be welcome!
R
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Aye, her stroke was permanent but the only symptom that could be then attributed to it was years of feeling exhausted but not understanding why her energy levels fluctuated so much. It was in the occipital lobe, so one might expect visual issues but nothing obvious that one wouldn’t expect with age like needing glasses for reading. It was quite a spread area as well, and I compared MRIs and her damage was larger, although mine was bilateral and multifocal. So, left and right of my cerebellum and a few spots, not just one area.
Her symptoms were non-apparent, but I believe they call this a silent stroke, and many people can have them over their lifetime but not know unless they have their brains scanned. Some scientists believe these silent strokes might contribute to geriatric characteristics.
So what is a small stroke? Is it symptom measured? Density? Not sure. People call TIAs mini strokes but, technically, they are not. It would be clearer called a transient stroke. I suspect when people say, I’ve had a small stroke, they mean the symptoms are less severe than what they might have been. It’s not as clear cut as other injuries; swollen ankle, twisted ankle, fractured ankle, broken ankle &c.
My stroke consultant told me about the saturation of dead matter as to its age. I can only go by what he had told me when going through my MRI with me. Google’s AI overview makes this statement … “ In summary: By carefully analyzing the changes in signal intensity and appearance of the brain tissue on different MRI sequences, radiologists can estimate the age of a stroke. This information is crucial for determining the appropriate treatment and management strategies.”
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@SueBT @RobbieJ @kimbers94 Welcome all of you to this forum. I’m sure you will find our community of survivors a great support. As I said to people having a stroke was certainly not on my bucket list for this year. More on a F*** it list! I think everything has already been mentioned as to the definition re a big vs small stroke. As one point I was told mine was a small stroke ( not a TIA or mini stroke) and in the back of the head A posterior circulatory stroke which had affected my balance which didn’t show up on MRI or CT and is defined as a MRI negative stroke. I read early on that they now avoid the use of small or large strokes because this is very subjective. What might physiologically be a small stroke will still have a big impact on the individual who is recovering from it. I for one am grateful that I was not left with a greater loss of function or disability, however because I look and appear pretty normal this can paint a rather distorted picture of how I am coping. Which I imagine might be the same for you all? So in a roundabout way what I am trying to say perhaps to myself too is that in this case " size doesn’t matter" It is how you are handling it!! Non of us set out to join the stroke club but here we are like it or not. Thanks to you all for your words of wisdom. Hilary
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