VIDEO: A local firefighter is back at home recovering after a stroke paralyzed half his body. His journey to walk again hasn’t been easy.
Some recoveries are about learning how to live again, but for Paul McNabb, his recovery journey is about fighting his way back to the life he already loves, as a firefighter in both Guilford and Alamance Counties and a paramedic in Alamance County.
It started on a quiet drive home, fresh off a 24-hour firefighting shift, when a body trained to save lives suddenly sent a warning of its own, “I instantly knew I was having a stroke,” Paul McNabb said. McNabb didn’t hesitate. He turned around and drove to the nearest hospital, seven minutes away, racing the clock before the damage could set in, “an entire side of your body going numb? Not normal. At all. Ever.”
What followed were days in intensive care, therapy and uncertainty, and somehow, even there, moments of lightness, “I could still speak, but you couldn’t understand much of what I was saying.” Through it all, he never lost his laugh.
