Aubrey Plaza has been remarkably open about her stroke and experiences with paralysis and aphasia (which is a net positive, as it helps remove any stigmas when it comes to discussing something as distressingly common as strokes). As she told Fresh Air, she was simply visiting a friend at their apartment when, mid-sentence and discussing a Hilary Duff concert she’d attended with her sister, she blacked out briefly. When she came to, she couldn’t speak. Though her friends thought she was joking at first, they eventually realized that it was serious and called an ambulance.
“And the recovery was – you know, it was – there was no recovery. I mean when you have a stroke, you have a stroke,” Plaza explained. “There’s nothing you can do about it. Your brain has to heal itself.”
Plus, Plaza added, she still has lingering complications from the experience, even after cognitive therapy and a successful recovery. “But I still have – there’s still certain, you know, things that only I would notice that are kind of residual from – left over from that incident,” she said. “And since then, I’ve had some minor – they call them TIAs, which are transient ischemic attacks, that are tiny little strokes. So something’s up with my blood, but I don’t know what it is.”
