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Multi-hyphenate artist Donald Glover, also known by his stage name Childish Gambino, has five Grammy Awards, two Emmys and, at 42, one stroke.
"I was doing this world tour," he said at a November concert in Los Angeles. "I had a really bad pain in my head in Louisiana, and I did the show anyway. I couldn't really see well. So, when we went to Houston, I went to the hospital. And the doctor was like, ‘You had a stroke.'"
Glover said doctors found a "hole" in his heart, which required two surgeries. He then canceled the remainder of his 2024 tour, including a stop in Houston.
He's part of a growing trend the medical community is sounding the alarm about: strokes are becoming more prevalent among younger adults.
"People think of strokes as a disease of the elderly, and that's a really important public health message that it's not," said Dr. Sean Savitz, the director of the Institute for Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases at UTHealth Houston and the stroke medical director for the Memorial Hermann Health System. "A stroke can affect people really at any age."
Strokes occur when something blocks blood supply to the brain, which can cause brain damage, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They're one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
A CDC study published in 2024 pointed to an increased prevalence of strokes among younger adults. Comparing data collected from 2011-2013 and from 2020-2022, the prevalence of strokes among adults aged 18-44 had increased by 14.6%.
Researchers have difficulty in recognizing exactly why this is. Many of the risk factors for adults, like sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy diets and smoking, are now considered risk factors for younger adults, too. An American Heart Association study from 2024 found even nontraditional risk factors, like migraines or autoimmune diseases, need to be considered as factors.
As such, the increased prevalence is forcing the medical field to play catch-up in treating a demographic they weren't completely prepared for.
Evan Cadena, a La Feria resident in the Rio Grande Valley, is 21 and has had three strokes in his life, beginning when he was 16. Doctors found an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a tangle of blood vessels where arteries connect directly to veins, disrupting blood flow.
He underwent three separate surgeries, which involved stopping blood flow to the AVM, each of which, doctors said, caused his strokes.
"He had to relearn everything with his left side," his mother, Janie Lazo, said in an interview with Houston Public Media. "He couldn't write because he was right hand dominant. So, he had to learn to write with his left [hand] as fast as possible, because he was still going to be going to school."
Being a high school-age stroke survivor, Cadena said he missed some pivotal coming-of-age experiences, like learning how to drive a car. Dating wasn't easy because of his medical needs and memory loss that was brought on by the strokes. Even speaking with a Houston Public Media reporter, it was difficult for him to answer open-ended questions. He said his condition put him in a depression.
"It was a bad time," he said. "So, I was mostly locked away in my room, never really talked to anybody online or in person."
When Cadena's family went to find answers on how to recover — and how to cope — as a young stroke survivor, his mother said there weren't many resources for young stroke patients. She couldn't find support groups who knew that experience. She sought multiple doctors' opinions.
"Everything was geared towards people who are in their 60s and 70s, you know, or in their older ages," she said. "We had to get special permission to be sent to a rehab facility, and he was the first patient at that facility to be of his age."
Now, she has been documenting her sons' medical journey on social media. It’s an effort, in part, to shed light on their experience.
"I'm still alive," Cadena said. "I can move. I can do stuff. That's pretty much my drive."
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