A man suffered a massive stroke mid-flight on a Virgin Atlantic flight but no one seemed to notice as the man was stuck in his seat for nine hours and couldn't alert anyone as to what had happened.
Mike Dixon, 46, suffered a mini-stroke at his hotel and didn't realize when he boarded his plane in Las Vegas as he was heading home to London. He thought he just didn't feel well, the Daily Mail reports.
"I didn't realise it was a stroke, I thought I'd slept funnily," Dixon said according to the Daily Mail. "I assumed I could sleep it off and I'd be fine in the morning."
He felt like he was drunk after the mini-stroke.
"I was unstable and banging into things," he said. "I don't know how I got through security at the airport - I think they thought I was drunk."
He boarded the night flight and settled into his middle seat. "The middle seat, when you're 6ft 4in, is bad enough, and I just lost all feeling," Dixon told the Mail.
He suffered a second, massive stroke, leaving him unable to speak or move.
"I'm not sure exactly when it happened but it was pretty soon after I sat down. My arm was twitching, so I sat on it, and then it just went numb," he said.
As the lights went dim on the plane, no one noticed that Dixon was in distress, not even when the plane landed and passengers left. The passenger sitting next to him climbed over him to get out. "He asked me to move and obviously I couldn't, so he just climbed over. Everything after that is a blur," Dixon recalled.
It wasn't until everyone had gotten off that the crew noticed Dixon still sitting in his seat. The crew eventually helped him. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
"I think I knew then I would be looked after - the ambulance came onto the forecourt to get me off the plane," Dixon said. "At the hospital my wife was told I'd suffered a stroke." Dixon spent 16 days at the hospital before he was able to go home.
After he was released, it took Dixon several months to be able to use his right hand and six months for him to be able to hold a conversation.
"'My movement came back relatively quickly, but from my fingers to my elbow is still a bit sketchy," Dixon said. "When I was in hospital I was given a coffee and because I couldn't control my hand I squashed the cup. It just wasn't working properly. It's getting better every day and I look like a normal person apart from my right hand."
Despite being ignored for nine hours, Dixon praised the Virgin crew for reacting quickly once they realized what had happened. He says Virgin called him days after the incident to check in on him. He says he doesn't blame them for not noticing right away.
"Nobody looks at you and thinks it's going to be a stroke. If I was 10 or 20 years older then they might have thought about a stroke, but not at my age."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
