09/01/2026
Laura Sammons was approaching a red light with her family in their minivan when suddenly she forgot how to drive. As cars swerved to miss them, her husband, Nick, grabbed the wheel and steered into a parking lot.
Laura, a lawyer and Air Force veteran, said her arm was numb but otherwise struggled to explain how she felt. Nick insisted they go to the emergency room. Doctors chalked up the episode to paralytic migraines. Not satisfied with that explanation, later that week Laura went to a cardiologist and neurologist for more testing.
Not only had she had a stroke while driving, but she also had a hole in her heart called a patent foramen ovale, or PFO, and an irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation, or AFib. Both conditions raise the risk of stroke.
After the stroke, Laura, a mother of five, couldn’t remember what she’d read. When she spoke, words flowed out of order, and she would call objects the wrong word. “My initial response was: ‘Everything I am, I can’t be anymore. … So who does that make me?’ It was a challenge.”
After a successful ablation to control her AFib, Laura’s recovery accelerated. She no longer needs any heart medications and gets regular exercise. She’s holding off for now on surgery to repair her heart’s hole.
Laura is grateful to the doctors who initially recognized the stroke and what caused it. “When I wasn’t satisfied with the answers I had been given, they took my concerns seriously and put in the effort to identify the real problem and provide the treatment I needed.”
HCA Healthcare Foundation is proud to be the national sponsor of Getting to the Heart of Stroke™
