JOHN WALK
Jon Epley of Legacy Five experienced a medical crisis last week that could have changed his life forever. Remarkably, just days later, he says he feels completely normal. In a Facebook video, Epley shared the terrifying details of what happened.
“Thursday night, I was at home, and I was sitting on the bed looking at my phone. It was about 10 o’clock. At exactly 10:05, I had just looked at the time,” Epley recalled. What started as an odd sensation quickly escalated into something far more serious. “At 10:05, I thought, man, my phone feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. I’m having trouble holding it up right now. My arm started feeling worse.”
Epley got up and walked to the kitchen, shaking his arm in an attempt to restore feeling. He initially thought his arm had simply fallen asleep, but the situation deteriorated rapidly. “And within a few seconds, it started happening to my right leg. I couldn’t put weight on it. It started feeling like it was just made out a rubber or something.”
Within half a minute, Epley realized the gravity of what was happening. “About 30 seconds in, I actually said out loud. I said, I think I’m having a stroke,” he said. He made his way back to the bedroom, but by that point, the paralysis had taken over. “And by the time I got back there, it had been about two minutes. And I fell back on my bed and called 911 with my left hand because within two minutes, my whole right side was gone. It was paralyzed. I could not move my right leg, my right arm, my hand.”
The fear intensified when emergency services answered. “I was scared. And 911 answered the call. And when they answered, I really got scared because I started trying to tell them my address and what was going on and I couldn’t form words,” Epley explained.
Paramedics transported him to hospital, where he was admitted Thursday night. Throughout Friday, medical staff conducted numerous tests. “Friday afternoon they did an MRI,” he said, noting that doctors also ordered an echocardiogram.
The following morning brought confirmation of what Epley had suspected. “This morning the neurologist came in. She said you had a stroke and she said it wasn’t one of those many strokes. She said you had a stroke deep in the left side of your brain and the left side you know affects the right so she said that’s why you lost everything on the right side,” he recounted.
What happened next astounded medical professionals. The neurologist told Epley his recovery was extraordinary. She “basically went on to tell me how rare this was, how unheard of this was that I was sitting there and by today I was totally fine, didn’t feel anything, everything worked fine, speak fine,” he said. Medical staff administered comprehensive assessments to verify his condition. “They did all kinds of comprehension tests on me and reading and vision and everything,” Epley noted.
At the conclusion of the examination, the neurologist emphasized just how fortunate he was. “She reiterated again at the end there. You are one lucky person,” Epley said. But the singer had a different perspective on his remarkable recovery. “And I couldn’t say anything except it’s not luck. It’s the Lord.”
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