Life can change in an instant, as 40-year-old Chad Thompson found out on April 23, 2022.

Then just 39, the active husband and father of two boys had just finished trimming apple trees on his brother’s property in Paris, Michigan, when he began to feel strange on the road back to the house.

In March 2015, I was at home with my father. Nothing was out of the ordinary when he started showing signs of a stroke.

At the time, I didn’t know what was going on, so I called for an ambulance. The paramedics came to the house and confirmed my dad was having a stroke. His speech was slurred.

Strokes can materialize in unexpected ways. Such was the case for Phillip Hamilton, a professor of history at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va., whose stroke possibly resulted from a neck injury that he doesn’t remember sustaining.