In this episode Alan Smith shares how he was able to take health struggles and the death of a child, and find happiness even after extreme pain.
Alan was born and raised in Utah. He is something of a Renaissance man with his love to read, write, paint, sing, and ballroom dance. He’s a realtor by profession, and has been married for 25 years to Susan who rolls her eyes at his dad jokes, but he’s sure she’s laughing on the inside. As a writer, Alan goes by the name A.D. Sherman.
Alan goes by A.D. Sherman because he says he’s still a little shy about his writing, and the name Alan Smith isn’t that exciting. Alan decided to write under a pseudonym. A high school nickname inspired the last name of Sherman, the A is from his name Alan, and the D stands for death, dismemberment, dragons, Dracula and all of those fun, creepy things.
Alan is currently working on a book. It is called the Undertaker’s Apprentice and it’s about a 16 year old boy who on his first awkward day as an undertaker’s apprentice, accidentally becomes a sorcerer.
Alan is the oldest of four kids, but was very small for his age and got bullied in the neighborhood. He had one close friend but didn’t have lots of other friends. Alan’s mom also had some complications with pregnancy and postpartum, which left Alan to do a lot of the work around the house like laundry and cooking. Alan didn’t really have a traditional childhood because he was busy taking care of things for his siblings. He tried to have a sense of humor and fun, but overall his childhood was busy and full of work.
At the age of 18, Alan had something shocking happen to him. He had a significant stroke, which is highly unusual in someone so young. He didn’t expect it at all. Alan and his family didn’t realize what had happened right away. He was working in a book warehouse, and suddenly began feeling really sick. He felt dizzy and nauseous and he couldn’t stand or see. Alan worked at the warehouse with his mom, and she was busy working. So, Alan went up to the bathroom and spent a half hour throwing up and feeling miserable. He finally dragged himself to the break room couch where slept the rest of the day. Within a couple of days he felt enough better that he could go back to work, and he thought nothing else of it.
A little while later Alan went in for a physical. They tested his peripheral vision by holding up fingers, and on one side Alan couldn’t see any fingers at all. This lead to a lot of tests, a misdiagnosis of a heart valve issue, and more tests.
Fourteen years later, Alan was having stroke symptoms. He decided to go in and see a doctor who told him he had an opening between the chambers of his heart. This opening allows blood clots to happen, so he was having little strokes. The doctor went in with a catheter to close the opening, which is a relatively successful surgery. It didn’t work for Alan though. He had another surgery 10 months later which fixed the problem.
Alan says that spending so much of his life wondering why he felt tired and sick made him depressed and was extremely hard to deal with. But 14 years later when he finally understood that he’d been having strokes, it made a huge difference in his ability to start moving forward with his life.
Alan says that when he was young MRI’s were relatively new and unreliable. So it was hard for him to get correctly diagnosed. He says that you can watch to find stroke symptoms like drooping in a face, tingling in a face or fingertips, and other things that can help indicate a stroke.
Alan met his wife after his first stroke at 18, and has been married for 25 years. But marriage and parenthood didn’t start out...