- Marissa Fattore, 21, was an athlete all her life and never smoked
- Her doctors suspected the stroke was due to her estrogen birth control pill
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A competitive swimmer suffered a stroke during her graduation, which doctors believed was due to the pill.
Marissa Fattore, 21, was graduating from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in 2013 when she felt an intense headache and a strange foggy feeling in her head.
She put it down to nerves, but collapsed when she returned to her seat.
Mrs. Fattore had been an athlete all her life and had never smoked, but suffered a stroke.
Fattore (far right) with three of her graduating classmates
Marissa Fattore, 21, was graduating from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in 2013 when she felt a severe headache and a strange fuzzy feeling in her head
“It got dark for me, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital,” she said Business insider.
Ms Fattore was taken to hospital, where doctors discovered that a blood clot in her brain had caused an unusual type of stroke called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST).
It happens when blood clots block the venous sinuses in the brain, which collect pools of blood and help drain the central nervous system, face and scalp. This means that the blood cannot drain.
Ms Fattore was given anticoagulant and anti-epileptic drugs to stabilize her, but she was unresponsive during the first 24 hours in hospital.
“My family remembers me squeezing their hands or just smiling when they asked me simple questions. “I ended up waking up with doctors around me, and I didn’t know how I got there or what had happened,” she said.
Strokes normally affect adults in their 70s, but have been rising faster for decades among younger adults (those 18 to 45) than among those in any other age group. In some hospitals, cases have nearly doubled in just a few years.
Data from the American Heart Association shows that stroke rates in the U.S. increased by 43 percent among youth ages 18 to 44 between 2004 and 2018.
Doctors suspected that the estrogen pill Ms Fattore had taken may have led to the stroke as they could find no risk factors or genetic predisposition.
Blood clots are a rare side effect of estrogen birth control. According to the Cleveland Clinic, fewer than 10 in 10,000 people experience a blood clot each year as a result of birth control.
In contrast, one to five in 10,000 people develop blood clots each year who are not using hormonal contraception.
After about a week in the hospital, Ms. Fattore was transferred to a physical rehabilitation center, where she learned to walk and talk again.
She said: ‘Although it was physically tough on my body, I think the mental side of it was tougher on me. I just didn’t understand how this could happen to me and I was terrified. I had a great fear that I would not return to the way I was before and that I would have lifelong deficiencies.’
She left the rehabilitation center a month after arriving there and stopped taking her anticoagulation medications a year later. Ms Fattore still has to take anti-seizure medication for life.
Doctors say more unhealthy lifestyles and rising numbers of obese people may be behind the shift to more strokes in younger people – with obesity increasing the risk of weak arteries that can cause blood clots.
But other factors, such as overconsumption of alcohol and the higher rates of smoking, vaping and even marijuana use among young adults, could also be to blame.
The most common form of stroke – called ischemic stroke, which accounts for about 60 percent of cases among young people – is caused by a blockage or clot that restricts blood flow in the brain, leading to cells being deprived of essential oxygen and nutrients and begin to die.
The other major type of stroke, called hemorrhagic strokes, is when a blood vessel in the brain bursts and its contents begin to leak into the organ.