Casey went to the dentist for a mouthguard. She left needing life-saving surgery.

On a Wednesday morning in October, Casey got up for a dentist appointment.

The 36-year-old got in her car, drove 48 km to the dentist, and sat quietly while a dental technician fitted her for a mouthguard.

It wasn't until the technician started asking Casey about her dogs that something strange happened.

"I couldn't remember what their names were," she told Mamamia. "It was a very weird feeling. I couldn't put everything together in my head."

She brushed it off, skirted the question, and rushed out of the appointment, just wanting to get back to her day.

But on the drive back, she passed billboards she couldn't read, words blurring into nonsense.

"I knew for sure that something was wrong."

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Back at her office, she found her husband, who she worked with, and burst into tears.

"That, of course, is not something that I normally do," she said. "So that kind of made him freak out."

He asked what was wrong, but Casey could only get out fragments: "I can't get words. Like, no words."

At this point, he decided to take Casey to the hospital.

Once there, the medical team ran some tests. It turned out that healthy, 36-year-old Casey, who was a frequent runner with no family history, had just had a stroke.

"Fortunately for me, it was on the lower scale in terms of severity, and I gained back all noticeable functions pretty quickly," she said.

But now she was in the hospital, surrounded by doctors, tests, and uncertainty about why this had happened.

"I went from never going to the doctor to having a whole team of cardiologists, a whole team of neurologists. I had a haematologist."

Eventually, they found the reason: an atrial septum defect (ASD), "which is essentially a hole in the wall of the top two chambers of the heart."

Casey had been born with it, but had never known.

Doctors believed a small clot that would have resolved itself had passed through that hole and gone straight to her brain, causing the stroke.

Her cardiologist wanted to close the ASD. Her neurologist didn't think it was necessary yet, and worried about surgery risks.

"At that point, it was very frustrating and scary for me," Casey said. "Because I'm like, 'What happens if I don't have surgery? What's going to happen to my heart? Or if I have surgery, am I gonna have another stroke in the process?'"

After weeks of back and forth, Casey begged her doctors to talk to each other. They finally did, and eventually agreed that heart surgery was the best way forward.

"It was a big sense of relief to me," she said.

Her cardiologist suggested a transcatheter procedure rather than open-heart surgery, entering through her groin to patch the hole. It would mean less risk, a shorter hospital stay, and faster recovery, but the long-term data was limited.

"That was really what was very worrisome to me at that point," Casey said. "But ultimately I decided to move forward with it."

The surgery went smoothly. "It lasted only a couple [of] hours altogether," she said. They inserted a flattened device through a catheter, guided it into place with a camera, and released it, allowing it to expand and cover the hole. Within three months, her heart tissue would grow over it, making it part of her heart wall.

Casey spent one night in the hospital. "For heart surgery, it really wasn't very bad at all," she said.

Afterwards, she was on light duty for a few weeks and gradually returned to normal activities. "My heart's been healthy — as far as I know — since then," she said. "I'm very thankful for modern medicine."

But the experience has left its mark. Casey now has what her doctors call "white coat syndrome".

"Every time I go to the doctor, regardless of what it's for, my blood pressure skyrockets," she said.

"They're like, 'Yeah, if you've had a traumatic experience at the doctor, that sometimes happens to people forever'," she explained.

It's not surprising, really. One morning, she was driving to the dentist, tired and looking forward to the weekend. and by the next day, she was in a hospital bed, unable to find her words, staring at a future she couldn't predict.

"I think this experience really made me look forward to every day," Casey told us. "Even though tomorrow's gonna be pretty mundane… I'm gonna get up and go to work and do the dishes… but it kind of changed my outlook on life.

"When I was laying in the hospital after I had the stroke, I was like, 'Well, this was crazy. I can't believe that this happened to me'. I also started to think about how lucky I was that I would be able to leave the hospital."

Casey got her words back. She got her life back. And now, she doesn't just look forward to holidays or weekends. She's learned to look forward to tomorrow, even if it's just another day.

Feature Image: wanderingeverywhere.com