True Strength
Actor Kevin Sorbo's Recovery from Stroke
Updated March 21, 2013
Actor
Kevin Sorbo once felt as invincible as the man he portrayed on television.
Hercules was once the number one television show worldwide.
Sorbo had the title role. Always athletic, he often worked fourteen-hour
days and then put in two hours at the gym.
In 1997, Sorbo began to feel numbness and cold sensations in his left
arm. He shrugged the sensation off for months. A doctor initially
thought that it was likely an
ulnar neuropathy, perhaps gained in one of Sorbo's many fight scenes.
Sorbo felt a growing pain in his left shoulder. An examination by
another doctor uncovered a mass there. He was scheduled for a biopsy.
Before this could occur, though, a chiropractor did a neck manipulation
and Sorbo's life changed.
The lump that had been found in Sorbo's shoulder was an
aneurysm,
a dilated blood vessel prone to form clots. These clots had been
traveling down Sorbo's arm, resulting in numbness, tingling and pain.
After the neck manipulation, clots traveled up into Sorbo's brain as
well.
At the age of 38, Sorbo had several
strokes. Not only has he since recovered, but he has gone on to be a strong
advocate for awareness about this common cause of disability and death.
Sorbo was awarded for his efforts at the 2013 Annual Conference of
the American Academy of Neurology, where he was kind enough to agree to
an interview regarding his ordeal and his recently published memoir,
True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life.
AN: Many people have strokes. Not everybody is motivated to
speak about it or serve as an advocate as you have been. What is it that
drove you to take those additional steps?
KS: Two words: my wife. She started bugging me years ago and said,
"you have a story to tell. You played Hercules, for heaven's sakes, and
you suffered strokes. You're the last guy people would think that could
happen to."
Initially I didn't want to do it. I didn't want people to know that
weakness that was there. It was tough. It was tough on the ego, it was
tough on self-esteem, it was tough on everything.
AN: As a doctor I have to say that your recovery is remarkable. What problems did you have initially?
There were four strokes initially. One dissolved before I got to the
hospital. That was speech. I looked at my at-the-time fiance. She just
stared at me; I stared at her. I could barely stand up--I was like a
drunk. I was hanging on to her, and she dragged me into Cedars-Sinai to
the emergency room. Luckily, she'd been a volunteer for two years, so
she had some pull. My doctor was very good too; he got things rolling. I
had two (strokes) into my balance center and one into my vision. I
still have a ten percent loss of vision in both eyes.
AN: As an actor, to have your speech taken right away must have been terrifying.
KS: I thought I was going to die that day. There was no doubt in my
mind. Universal Studios kept it very quiet. The only thing they let out
was that I had an aneurysm.
AN: How did they take care of the aneurysm itself?
KS: The
angio. They went through and put in a platinum coil. And at that time in 1997 that was kind of a newer procedure.
AN: Then, as part of the recovery process, you had physical therapy?
KS: Four months of learning to walk again. First it was just sitting
in a chair because I couldn't sit up very well. I would throw a ball up
and try to catch it. It took me a long time. I would catch like one a
day, but would be throwing a hundred up in the air.
It was so frustrating. I would sit and realize I would never be the
same person. That was the hardest thing. Because I felt like somebody
had died. It was me, and I had to find a new person.
Trust me, I had a lot of talks with God. There was a lot of blame at
everybody else, which we're so typically doing, but as my dad always
told me years ago: "Look in the mirror. That's where your problem is."
AN: And you've certainly gone on to have many accomplishments since.
KS: Well, I finished the last seasons of Hercules, but it was a
struggle. I did five years of Andromeda after that, and have done about
forty movies.
AN: So as a model of there being life after stroke...
KS: That's why the (book) title is called "True Strength."
Hercules... that was phony strength, you know, stunt guys making me look
good. I'm a very strong-willed person. I'm a thirteen year overnight
success in Hollywood. I'm used to the frustration.
I used to caddy at a country club, and I used to ask all these guys,
"how did you become so wealthy?" Every single one of them had the same
story: "I failed, and I didn't let it stop me. And I failed again, and I
didn't let it stop me." They taught me that failure is a good thing,
you learn from failures. Just what my dad taught me, too. Hard work--
it's all about hard work.
The dizzy spells were horrendous all the time. I had vertigo and was
falling backwards 24 hours a day for about a year and a half.
AN: And yet here you are. You walked over here without a hint of a problem.
KS: If I get really tired, working too hard, not getting sleep, I get
that sensation. Like I told my wife, I call it the "stroke feeling." I
say "I'm getting that stroke feeling again," and I just need to lay
down.
AN: You've done a lot of advocacy, including mentioning of the FAST response for stroke awareness. Is that a point of emphasis for you?
KS: It really comes down to listening to your body. Don't become a
hypochondriac, but you have to listen to your body. I didn't listen to
my body. I had three months of warnings in my arm. That aneurysm, which I
didn't know existed, was throwing off clots slowly. These fingers
became cold, numb. I couldn't figure out what was going on with it... My
shoulder was killing me, just killing me.
AN: Looking back now, you've learned a lot and done a lot of
reading about stroke. What would you have liked to have known at the
time?
KS: After I had had the strokes? I think the most important thing is,
you should tell your patients to have patience. That they have to find
their own perspective, that they have to find their own positive
attitude about getting better as well. And you as doctors shouldn't set
limitations on your patients, because I had limitations put on me. They
said after three to six months, whatever you're feeling, you have to
live with the rest of your life. And after six months, I was still doing
pretty crappy. And I just said, "you know what, the hell with this.
There's no way I'm going to let this thing beat me." I was already
pushing myself anyway. I'm the type of guy who if the doctor says only
walk a block I'll walk five blocks if I can. I'll push myself.
When I went to a place like this, with a thousand people, the noise
was too much for me. I didn't drive for two years, because cars going
by... my brain, it overloaded, and I would get dizzy, I would get
nauseous, I suffered migraines. All these things happened to me. But I
started putting myself into situations like that. I would tell my wife,
"look, if I don't... I'm not going to get better. It's no pain, no
gain." I had to push myself to get better, and that's what I did.
AN: All right. Mr. Sorbo, thank you very much.
KS: Thank you.
Mr. Sorbo's book
True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life is now available. For more information, visit his website:
True Strength: By Kevin Sorbo.
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