When Cheryl’s right leg suddenly felt numb on a visit to her daughter, she thought it was just asleep.
“I started walking around,” she says. “But it wasn’t going away.” Later that day, Cheryl fell while walking from the car to her daughter’s apartment. Knowing she had likely broken her foot, Cheryl’s daughter urged her to go to the emergency room.
At Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital, when the doctor mentioned a stroke code, Cheryl realized that the numbness in her leg might have been the symptom of a stroke. “It was very traumatic,” says Cheryl when she thinks about her time in the emergency room, “but I had the best team in the hospital.”
She is grateful to her daughter for persuading her to go to the emergency room. Without her, she might not have gone to the hospital at all, she says. “She’s my hero.”
While Cheryl was still in the ICU, a hospital stroke team member told her about Kandu Health. She registered for the the program that day.
When stroke survivors join Kandu, they are assigned a Navigator to offer support throughout the program. Cheryl easily connected with her Navigator, Puja, during their first conversation, “Puja is so empathetic and compassionate,” says Cheryl. “She’s a great communicator.”
“As a Navigator, my role is to help survivors improve their quality of life after a stroke,” says Puja. “When I met Cheryl, I knew she would benefit from Kandu since she understood the struggle [of navigating the healthcare system] from having been a health professional herself. She used the resources to really take control of her recovery.”
When it came time to go back to work, Cheryl was anxious. She was starting to notice some cognitive deficits. “I didn’t know what my abilities were,” she says. “I started to self-doubt and wondered if I could do it.” During the most challenging moments in her recovery, Cheryl says, Puja helped her find her inner strength. “She makes you feel like you can do it.”
Cheryl had a broken foot from falling when she had her stroke, but she didn’t have any other visible signs of a stroke—“Everybody thought I was OK,” she says. Without Kandu, Cheryl says, she wouldn’t have known how to handle some of the hidden effects of her stroke—things that others didn’t see but were affecting her daily life.
The educational material in the Kandu app also helped Cheryl feel empowered. “I’m a nurse by profession, so I knew some medical terms,” she says. “But it’s different when you’re teaching it to someone than when it happens to you.”
Initially hesitant, Cheryl is thankful for Puja’s suggestion to join a Connect Group through Kandu. These virtual groups, where survivors support each other weekly, are a key part of the Kandu program. Cheryl says joining a group helped her realize she wasn’t alone. “I was never a support group person before,” she says. But since her experience, she recommends Connect Groups whenever she talks with another stroke survivor: “They’re just amazing.”
Cheryl also credits Connect Groups for boosting her confidence and providing a sense of community. “It’s nice to have that support and have other people who have had a similar experience to talk to and know what I’m experiencing,” she says.
After Cheryl graduated from the Kandu program, Puja asked her to be a Kandu Ambassador. Cheryl now helps lead the Connect Groups she was once hesitant to join. “I am so very honored to be in this role,” she says.
This new role as a Kandu Ambassador is bringing purpose to Cheryl’s stroke experience. She describes her role as being a supporter of new survivors. She says that she gets out of it more than she puts in: “We learn from new survivors, too,” Cheryl says. “It comes with the best rewards. I love it."
"It's like we're truly family," she says.