Bieber said that COVID, travel and birth control were likely contributing factors that led to her suffering a blood clot last month.
A little over a month after suffering a blood clot to her brain, Hailey Bieber is sharing the details of the scary incident and the diagnosis she received from her doctors.
In a YouTube video that Hailey posted on Wednesday, the 25-year-old model explains how on March 10, she experienced what she believed to be a stroke while having breakfast with her husband, Justin Bieber. Hailey said she experienced a tingling sensation from her shoulder down to her fingertips and a drooping in the right side of her face that left her virtually unable to speak.
"We were in the middle of talking and all of a sudden, I felt this really weird sensation that kind of like, traveled down my arm from my shoulder all the way down to my fingertips, and it made my fingertips feel really numb and weird," Hailey shared.
Hailey said she tried to move her fingers around to figure out what the sensation was.
Perplexed by what his wife was experiencing, Justin asked Hailey if she was OK, but when she tried to respond, she found herself unable to.
"Justin was like, 'Are you OK?' And I just didn't respond because I wasn't sure and then he asked me again, and when I went to respond, I couldn't speak," she continued. "The right side of my face started drooping. I couldn't get a sentence out. Everything was coming out -- not even jumbled -- just like, couldn't get the words out."
At that point, both Hailey and Justin believed that she had suffered a "full blown stroke."
Justin then called for medical attention, and they were greeted by a medic who started testing Hailey's vital signs before she was transported to the hospital.
After running some tests, Hailey's doctors discovered that she had not suffered a stroke but rather a blood clot to her brain that they categorized as a Transient Ischemic Attack or TIA, which is described by the Mayo Clinic as "a temporary period of symptoms similar to those of a stroke. A TIA usually lasts only a few minutes and doesn't cause permanent damage. Often called a ministroke, a TIA may be a warning."
"Basically, it's like having a ministroke," Hailey explained. "It definitely feels like having a stoke, except my body was able to resolve it pretty quickly and then I didn't have any more issues for the whole rest of the day and the whole rest of the time that I was in the hospital."
The model went on to share that she felt grateful that it wasn't worse and that she wasn't going to experience any permanent side effects after suffering the TIA.
As a precautionary measure, Hailey's doctors kept her overnight at the hospital and ran several tests and reached a somewhat startling conclusion as to what caused the blood clot in the first place.
"The conclusion that all of the doctors came to, was three different things: One, was that I had just recently started birth control pills. Which, I should've never been on, because I am someone who suffered from migraines anyway, and I had just not talked to my doctor about this. So, ladies, if you suffer from bad migraines and you plan on being on birth control pills, make sure you tell your doctor, because having a stroke is a potential side effect from birth control pills," Hailey began.
She continued, "The second thing, was I had recently had COVID, and that was something that they thought was a contributing factor, and then the third thing was, I had recently gone on a very long flight. I had flown to Paris and back in a very short amount of time. And I slept through the whole flight both ways, didn't get up and move around. Never thought about wearing compressions socks. So, basically, all of the doctors came to the conclusion that it was the perfect storm that led to me having a small blood clot."
The next day, Hailey went to UCLA Medical Center, where they did more in-depth testing, that revealed she had what is called a patent foramen ovale or PFO, which is a hole in the heart that didn't close the way it should after birth. The small flaplike opening is between the right and left upper chambers of the heart (atria).
This was something she was tested for at the emergency room and was initially ruled out -- until she did a Transcranial Doppler -- a painless test which involved Hailey wearing a sort of helmet that uses sound waves to detect medical problems that affect blood flow in your brain. It can detect stroke caused by blood clots, narrowed sections of blood vessels, vasospasm due to a subarachnoid hemorrhage, tiny blood clots and more
"With this test, they listen to the sound of bubbles escaping in the heart. If they don't hear anything, presumably, you don't have a PFO. If they hear a little bit, you might have one, but it's small. And if they hear tons of bubbles escaping, you have one -- it's probably large," Hailey explained.
"So, I did this test, and they actually found that I have a grade 5 PFO, which is the highest grade that you can have. So, mine was fairly large," she continued.
What ultimately led to Hailey's ministroke was her blood clot escaping through the hole in her heart and making its way to her brain.
Hailey went on to get what is called a PFO closure to close that hole in her heart and prevent an incident like what happened last month from happening again.
"So, I recently got the PFO closure done, and it went very smoothly. I'm recovering really well, really fast. I feel great," she said before sharing her relief at not only getting some answers but some literal and physical closure to this major health scare. "This biggest thing I feel, honestly, I just feel really relieved that we were able to figure everything out, that we were able to get it closed. That I will be able to just move on from this really scary situation and just live my life."
See how Hailey's health scare actually brought her closer to her husband in the video below.
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