Ouch! I kind of suspected it was something like that. Glad to see you made a full recovery from your stroke.
Sean, I never stroked. But I had the brain bleed for about 45 days. I kept telling my doctor that I was having headaches. I have a history of sinus headaches, and that is what they kept telling me this was. I tried to tell them it was a different type of headache.
My mother passed shortly after the accident that caused the brain bleed. So I flew twice while I had the brain bleed. When I came back I knew I didn't feel right but, kind of attributed that to the passing of my mother.
I would type something on the PC and when I looked at it, the words would be gobbley gook! I drove too town one night to get some take out. On the way I started having one of those real bad headaches. I remember driving and having the feeling I was drunk or something. By closing one eye I managed to get back to the house.
I called my daughter that night and told her I needed to go to the doctor and I couldn't drive myself! She came and drove me to the appointment. By the time I got there I was slurring my words so bad, the doctor could barely understand me!! They would ask me about weight and I would tell them a weight I weighed 10 years before!!
They rushed me in for an MRI and the brain bleed was immediately identified. They also looked at the original MRI and saw where they had missed the brain bleed in the ER! When I came in the night of the accident!!
They took me in to surgery the next morning. They had given me something that they wanted time for it took work before the surgery if they could buy that much time!! They had told me if they could not relieve the pressure enough with drilling the holes in my skull that they would have to remove a section of my skull and it would be implanted in my side to keep it alive till the brain swelling had gone down!! Luckily the burr holes did the trick!!
So ended up I came about as close to a stroke as you can get without having one. The good Lord was looking out for me!!!
Back to the subject at hand the medical field throws away stuff all the time that is still useable but they don't want to take a chance on cross contamination from one patient to another!! You just want to make sure that what your getting is sterilized before you use it. No one wants flesh eating bacteria, or something similar from touching a tool that was meant to be thrown away!!