“It Was the Scariest Moment of My Life”: Hailey Bieber Opens Up About Her Recent Mini Stroke

Her medical team initially put the blood clot down to a “perfect storm” of circumstances, including a recent bout of COVID, a long flight to and from Paris, and finally a switch in birth control. “I had just started a birth control pill that I shouldn’t be on because I suffer from migraines anyway—and I didn’t talk to my doctor about it. So make sure you tell yours, ladies.”

Myriad follow-up tests found that, in fact, one of the reasons she had suffered the mini stroke was because she had a grade 5 (“the highest grade you can have—[it was] fairly large”) PFO, or patent foramen ovale, which is a small hole between the heart’s two chambers. “What typically happens is that the heart filters the clot to your lungs, which deal with it because they’re so big,” she explains in her video. “What happened with me is my blood clot escaped through the hole in my heart and it traveled to my brain, and that is why I suffered a TIA.”

To remedy it, she had a procedure to insert a “small button that closes the flap in the heart,” which stays there forever. “It went very smoothly, I’m recovering really well, I feel great,” she says in the video.

Bieber also revealed how the experience prompted an understandable flare-up in her anxiety, symptoms of which made her worry that she was suffering another stroke. “My anxiety was making me feel funny,” she says. “[It would] make my hands and fingers feel kind of tingly.”

Bieber—who concluded by empathizing with anyone watching who had experienced something similar—joins the likes of Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner (both friends) in choosing to address her health issues in a frank and honest way on social media. These young women subscribe to the mantra that when it comes to health, mental or physical, it’s good to talk. 

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