CT. Representative Corey Paris Gets Personal About His Mini Strokes and Serious Heart Health Journey

February is National Heart Month and It's also Congenital Heart Defect Week. I spoke with CT. Representative Corey Paris, who reps the 145th district, about his serious heart issues. He suffered from TIA's, also known as transient ischemic attacks or mini strokes. Upon further testing Rep. Corey was diagnosed with a hole in his heart known as patent foramen ovale (PFO). Rep. Paris emphasizes the importance of seeking medical specialists and advocating for oneself. He highlights the significance of paid leave for health recovery and family support, noting its impact on reducing poverty and increasing productivity. Corey also discusses his commitment to public service and community activism, and his vision for anti-poverty laws in Connecticut.

To get in touch with Rep. Corey Paris please go to the website at: 

Paris | Connecticut House Democrats

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Transcript

Nancy Barrow: 0:01

Hello Connecticut, and welcome to The Paid Leave Podcast. The title basically says it all. I'm Nancy Barrow, and I will be delving into this new state program and how it can help you and your family. This podcast will give you information you should know about Connecticut Paid Leave and maybe just a little bit more. Connecticut Paid Leave brings peace of mind to your home, family and workplace. Welcome to The Paid Leave Podcast. It's February, American Heart Month. And it's a time when the nation spotlights heart disease the number one killer of Americans. And during Heart Month, the AHA and other organizations reinforced the importance of heart health and the need for more research and efforts to ensure that millions of people live longer and healthier. President Lyndon B Johnson, among the millions of people in the country who've actually had a heart attack, issued the first proclamation in 1964 and since then, US presidents have annually declared February American Heart Month. With that reference to politics, it leads me to my guest, who's a Connecticut politician, Representative Corey Paris from the 145th District, which includes Stanford. And he's been involved in politics for like a decade, and was elected in a special election in April of 2021 state rep. Paris has had a serious health condition known as TIA, which stands for transient ischemic attacks, known as mini strokes. And we'll talk about how Connecticut Paid Leave could help with this serious health condition. And Corey has made it his life's purpose to commit his work and mission to public service and community activism. And he is the chief impact officer in business to person to person, which is based in Darien, which serves approximately 28,000 individuals in lower Fairfield County, and supports families and individuals as they move towards stability with healthy food, clothing, housing assistance and a path to economic opportunity. And He previously served as Chief Development Officer for the Children's Learning Centers of Fairfield County, the state's second largest center based Early Childhood Education Center, and he was instrumental in ushering in record support of revenue for the organization. And he serves currently on the Connecticut legislature's Appropriations Committee as Vice Chair and as a member of the Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee and Education Committee. Welcome to The Paid Leave Podcast Representative Paris.

Representative Corey Paris: 2:31

Thank you, Nancy. I want to be that guy you talked about.

Nancy Barrow: 2:34

Do you have time to do anything besides.

Representative Corey Paris: 2:37

No, no nothing, nothing at all. And it's funny that you said that because someone recently mentioned, you know, you gotta take a break. All you do is work. You're sending emails like 11 or 12am and with her usual dismay, my fiance shook her head, because I've tried to hide it from her that I'm working all the time. Oh, no. So no, I don't get any time to do anything else. But I'm glad that whatever it is that I am doing is creating some kind of impact for folks.

Nancy Barrow: 3:05

Which is amazing. And let me just say, you look really healthy, and how are you feeling now?

Representative Corey Paris: 3:10

I'm feeling better. Yeah, that's great question. I appreciate that so very much. You know, I've spent the last few weeks in convalescence. We had the PFO closure surgery, which was contributing to the tias and many strokes that I was experiencing over the past year and a half. That took place at the end of October, beginning of November. Doctor said, you know, you'll be up and out of in four hours. It was not it's been about four weeks to really recover and get back to where I needed to be. There was also a small issue during the surgery, where there was some issues with my heart rhythm, and I experienced afib. And I think what has happened since then is that it's really caused me to pay more attention to my body. I'm one of those people that will just keep going, going, going and figure out a way to rest later. But this has been jarring enough that I'm paying far more attention, and unfortunately, in this convalescence, because I'm being held hostage by the boss, as I like to refer to her, I have watched more episodes of Real Housewives of any franchise, and I care to admit and murder mysteries, so I can tell you which how to get along with really rich women in exotic places across country and kill your spouse and get away with it.

Nancy Barrow: 4:36

Oh, my goodness. Well, let's talk about your serious health condition and TIA. My dad had a TIA a mini stroke, but he was in his 70s, and I didn't realize young people could have this too. Um, tell me how you first found out that you had a TIA a mini stroke. What were some of the symptoms that you had?

Representative Corey Paris: 4:57

Yeah, so it was really interesting too. I was the first time I really had noticed that I was at a conference in Indianapolis, and at that conference in Indianapolis, I began to just kind of feel worn down the entire weekend, which I'm a big energy person, so that was a little odd, and I didn't want to do anything except stay in my hotel room. I was hot, I was cold, I was hot, I was cold, and then what ended up happening is I had this really awful pain and numbness in my left arm, and it went down the left side of my body, or the left side of my face was numb, and top of my head was tingling. So it was very odd. It was like a sudden onset, and I felt like maybe I was coming down with something, and your dad would tell you, they come on so quickly and so unexpectedly, that one moment you feel fine, and then the next, your body and your mind feels completely out of sync. So that took place for probably two or so days, and two weeks later, we were visiting family in Arkansas, and the physical sensations once again reappeared, and it felt like a sudden numbness and weakness, especially again on my left side of the body, and I experienced some difficulty talking and walking, and I felt like this certain urge and burst of anger, because, as I'm trying to call my doctor To schedule an appointment for when I returned home, I couldn't I knew what I was thinking, but cognitively, I could not get those words out verbally. Wow. So the symptoms disappeared within they lasted longer. It was not within a few minutes, but they lasted longer for a couple of hours. And again, it was a lot of physical limitations, so I made the promise to come back home. I got off the plane, went to Stanford Hospital, and in the ER, they said, we think you might have had a stroke. I said, There's no way. I was just trying to watch the Chiefs game at home. There's no way I just had almost had a stroke, right? And they said, no, no, no, we want to keep you overnight. So they kept me for a couple of days and said, you know, it doesn't seem like a stroke. Maybe it's Bell's Palsy, because my face, I'd expect, experienced facial droop. That didn't make sense either. So couple months have passed again. This is from August into December, I experienced the same symptoms again. But then fast forward from December to March of this year, I was at dinner. I was away on on a trip with friends, with colleagues from the legislature. I was at dinner, and I kept saying, I've got this awful headache, said to the point I came keep my eye open and my face is numb, and they're like, Corey, are you okay? And so they said, Look at me. Well, I turned to look at look at one of them. My whole face had started to droop. Oh no. I had a stroke right there at the table. And we went to the hospital and and it was again, no one caught it. Well, here's the reason why people fail to realize that tias and mini strokes, as dangerous as they are, they don't show up on CAT scans or brain scans. It's never there and the facial droop, they automatically assume that it's something else, but because in young people, it's not the textbook definition of what a person having a stroke should be. People basically passed it off as something completely different. Colleagues of mine noticed we were in a meeting one time a Lenny caviro Sagra would tell you I had a full thought coming out, and then I just stopped. And everyone in the room kind of just looked at me and they thought that, you know, I just gone silent. No one knew, but she knew. And the reason why she knew is because her mother had PFO, and her mother had a mini stroke as well, and her mother just started talking about something and then stopped had this was having the stroke, and then started talking about the same thing all over again. So she knew some of the symptoms. And for me, when I gone in for a test to just check in on other things, my cardiologist said, you know, because of the symptoms that they've said that you exhibited when you were here last August, I want to check you for something else he did, what's called a bubble test. And the bubble test showed that the bubbles were basically going from one chamber of my heart, from one side of the heart to the next, and just flowing through at an alarming rate. So lots of bubbles going through, which shows that there's a hole in the heart. And so he had put me under anesthesia, which was the best sleep I've had in like, the last 15 years, I have to tell you, he said, When they had gone down through, through my esophagus, that they found that the hole was anywhere between three millimeters to five millimeters wide, and they had to have a they had to close it. So that's when I was introduced to what's called a patent form in overly and it's a hole. The heart that didn't close the way that it should have during birth. And it's a common condition occurring in about 25% of the population. And many of the people who live with it across the globe can live with it without there being any significant health risk, or they could experience cryptogenic strokes, or just many strokes, or tias, so those account for about 20 to 40% of the strokes that happen in younger populations. And PFOs are often found to be a contributing factor in all of this. And what's really interesting is that the incidence of strokes have increased over 18% in the last three years, and have doubled, more than doubled, in people of color. So for since COVID, a lot of people and have either had these strokes and they attributed it to basically having migraines. So they'll go to a neurologist, but a neurologist is looking at them and going through all of these tests, and nothing's wrong. We'll say there's nothing wrong, but because they're not connecting that specialist overview with a cardiologist, and the cardiologist isn't confirming whether or not there's a PFO, many young people continue to be at risk for strokes or have strokes and aren't recovering the same way. So immediately, when I found out about this, the boss, of course, says to me, you have to go public, you have to say something. And I said, No, people will think that I'm weak, you know, they'll, you know, question whether or not I have the the stamina to do this work. They won't understand it, because when we as an educated population, don't understand things, especially in the realm of medical terms, then what happens is that we start to play into those fears. And so I didn't want folks that I'd known, folks that I was serving, to play into those fears, but the boss won, as she often does, and I went public.

Nancy Barrow: 11:57

You're very smart and you're not even married yet, you're very smart. I know she's the boss. Well, how did you handle this all emotionally?Corey because I feel like that would be a really scary diagnosis for someone your age. You know, I just think that that would be a lot for someone to take on. So did you go talk to anyone? Did you need to go see a professional? How do you handle that? That's a big diagnosis.

Representative Corey Paris: 12:25

Yeah I mean, there was almost immediately a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear. The most jarring piece of this was that there was so much unpredictability and not knowing if it's just the TIA or the start of something that's a more severe stroke, and then you immediately start thinking about all the times that you didn't feel well, and what those you know, what some of those challenges were, the physical limitations were really challenging. So I over the last couple of years, and I think the other big part is that I think I've been having these much longer than we might have experienced, but I just think as I've gotten older, it's presented differently. And for a very long time, we thought that there was a more something more serious, in terms of a neurological autoimmune disease that I had been struggling with, because there were times where it's very difficult for me to get out of bed, it's very hard for me to get words to come out of my mouth. I sometimes had to walk with the aid of a cane for support. Even though the effects weren't permanent. There were a reminder of how fragile health could be, and many things could set it off. Stress, weather, the chiefs losing, coming very close to losing a Super Bowl. You know, these are all things that were taking a physical toll, but the mental toll, which was so much more challenging because oftentimes, and this is something that's really bothering me, so many Americans, so many of our friends and family members us, including we deal with the the gas lighting behaviors of the medical community. And so to say you're not feeling this, or you're wrong about what you're feeling, or we don't see something, and basically you you're casted into, you know, the system of, you know, looking crazy, and then you feel crazy well, that further contributes to the downfall of your health, of health equity and your health sustainability. So I felt that as well, but I am ever so more determined as always, to overcome whatever it is that I'm experiencing, because through adversity comes power to be influential to others who might have lost hope as well. And I will tell you that, you know, even as I sat down with the surgeon who was going to be performing the surgery, he said to me, Well, you know, your insurance may not cover this, and that happens with a lot of patients. Never asked me what my insurance. Insurance was never asked me if I had insurance. He didn't know. He didn't even know who I was. And the thing that was really alarming to me is that I didn't feel right about this because my cardiologist had said you should stay in the hospital overnight. It's going to take you some time. You've got to rest this guy saying, take you four hours. You'll be up and out of here. Your insurance may not cover it. It'll be a few months before you even have it, and you've lived with it your whole life, so you'll be fine, right? So as an advocate for myself, I called because I have the power in and the influence to do so. I called some of our state elected officials, and I told them, This is concerning to me. We need to fix this. I need this. You know, can you tell me if this is going to be approved? My insurance company approved it in two hours. Yeah, the doctor didn't do what he was supposed to do, and it took him two weeks to approve it. But when I started to raise the alarm, so many of the doctors that were over, the surgeon called me and said, Well, I think, you know, you caught a good guy on a bad day, and he didn't know who you were meaning, because of my stature in the community, right? And that's exactly why that's even worse that he he it takes me to have to be someone with a title in front of my name in order to get my life saved in the following week, Nancy, I kid you not. True story, colleague of mine, Senator Ceecee Mar received an email from a young woman who is 31 years old with three children, had just been diagnosed with cancer and she had a PFO had been experiencing strokes as well. She said to me in this letter that the she wanted, the the surgery, she wanted, the PFO closure, the same person who was denying the PFO closure was the same person who was going to be giving me my surgery. And so when we and all these young people, started sending me messages, we've experienced tias, I've dealt with the same thing. I felt crazy. I went through a cardiac depression. I went through this. I didn't know what it was that said to me that this is a bigger issue and we have to find an answer and a solution to it.

Nancy Barrow: 17:04

One of the great things about Connecticut Paid Leave is that we've been giving the benefits since January 2022, and the biggest reason for people taking up to 12 weeks from work is for their own serious health conditions. And I think now that we have Connecticut Paid Leave, It's flexible with the leave plans that you can take, like a block leave, like you may have needed the 12 weeks to recuperate or intermittent leave or reduce schedule leave. How important are family friendly programs like this? Who really care about getting you better for your working constituents in Stanford, in the 145th District, how does it help them?

Representative Corey Paris: 17:46

You know, Nancy, no one else can see me right now, but I have tears in my eyes. Because I think about how serious this was and how fortunate, because you know, of the work that I do, how fortunate I am to not have to take from this program, not that I wouldn't, but because this is this is so important, because not only does it promote the health and well being for individuals across our state, as you said, with time and resources to recover from any condition that they're going through, or to support their family or loved ones without financial hardship and without bias, and without bias, which is so important. But what it also does is it reduces the risk of families falling into poverty due to a lack of income during this care group caregiving crisis, and it helps employers by reducing turnover and increasing productivity and promoting loyalty among employees. And so for me, you know, this would have allowed for me if I was not Corey Paris, a state rep, and I was just Corey Paris, regular guy living at Stanford, right? This would have allowed for me to prioritize my recovery without the stress of all of these other challenges, and it would have enabled me to focus on the healing and returning to work stronger and better. And I know that this entire experience has deepened my appreciation of how critical paid family leave is, not just for those with long term or chronic conditions, but for anyone, expect, anyone facing an unexpected medical challenge. And I think because of COVID, we have experienced things health wise that we would have never have seen before.

Nancy Barrow: 19:38

Did you have anyone besides the boss as a caregiver, and did she have to take time off from her TV job?

Representative Corey Paris: 19:45

No, she didn't. You know, the boss was still going to yoga and still going to workout classes, because I'm not a very good patient. That's I'm one of those people that I am the Superman for everyone else. And so. So to see me down and out, and to see me kind of off, it is jarring and alarming for all of my friends and family. But she also the boss, is very tough, and she would still go to work. She gets up at, you know, 230 in the morning, three o'clock. She's on air from four to 11. She would come back, check on me, she would go off, and then, you know, do the whole check, make sure I had the medicine, the whole nine yards. But what she is very good at is taking thorough notes. And whereas I forget things when advocating for myself, she's got a whole notepad of everything, and she'll send it to my doctors. But I think for her, what was super important was that her grandmother, she experienced the same thing with her grandmother. She had spoken to her grandmother only hours before her grandmother had passed away, and she kept telling her grandmother to go to the doctor. Now she's experiencing this with my grandmother now she's experiencing it with me. So I think other people have to realize that our caretakers are bearing the brunt far more than anyone else, because if we one thing goes wrong, the fear, the fear of uncertainty, becomes our reality, and that reality is alarming, because we're not going to be around.

Nancy Barrow: 21:25

One of the interesting things about Connecticut Paid Leave is their really expansive definition of family, right? So we do it by affinity, so you don't have to be a blood relative, and since right, you're not married yet. If she wanted to take time off from work, she could have taken up to 12 weeks to help you. And it could be a neighbor who's like a family member who wanted to take care of you too.

Representative Corey Paris: 21:50

It's one of those people Nancy that has a lot of friends who are chosen family,

Nancy Barrow: 21:54

Right? Exactly.

Representative Corey Paris: 21:56

I just don't know which one I could deal with for 12 weeks. I'll say that.

Nancy Barrow: 22:00

Well, it could be reduced schedule. You don't have to have them around all day.

Representative Corey Paris: 22:03

Yeah, exactly.

Nancy Barrow: 22:07

Let me kind of shift gears for a second. What advice would you give someone who maybe is following in your footsteps, a young politician, someone who really wants to get into politics, to affect change. What advice would you give someone?

Representative Corey Paris: 22:21

Be true to yourself. And I think that's the hardest part for me having gone into public office. You know, we talk about some of the health challenges that obviously I felt, and I think the reason why I felt I was so reticent to go public with it was because I'm young. Not only am I young, but I'm also a person of color. I'm not a native to our state. And I'm, you know, I'm different, you know, nut makers, at times. They their disposition is very calm and chill. I'm, let's, you know, let's win. Let's have a lot of energy. Let's put, let's put our all into everything, right? That's just how I grew up. What's really important to me is I look back to the Great Society, and you had invoked Lyndon Johnson at the beginning of the segment Nancy. And I think one thing that Lyndon Johnson did was that he made government a force for good for people. And so I think back to all the great things that he did, around housing, around education, Head Start, Medicaid, Medicare. We are in a space in time and with the uncertain of what this economy will look like four years from now, you know, we're in a space in time right now where we even in the wealthiest state of one of the wealthiest states in the union. We have to put anti poverty laws because the disparities are growing further and further, greater and greater. Many young people, who are making way more money than their parents have ever made, well over six figures, are still living paycheck to paycheck. Child Care is inaccessible and unaffordable for families. Young people don't want to have kids because they're afraid that they won't be able to afford, afford having children. And we have a crisis where, you know, in my district alone, which is one of the most densely concentrated districts in the state, but then also, you know, it's got some of the more income restrained parts of Stanford here, and it's got the wealthiest parts of the state here, I looked last night on Zillow to prove a point, there was a house in my district with five bedrooms that was renting, not for sale, renting for$15,000 a month. And even a two story, you know, a multi family home is almost $700,000 so when we talk about this, my focus is anything that is anti poverty, because I chose Connecticut, because I saw the promise in Connecticut, and it's it's lived up to that promise for me. But I want to make sure that every young person, every aging person, regardless of where they come from, of what they look like, of what they believe, has the opportunity. To acquire that Connecticut promise for them too.

Nancy Barrow: 25:03

Yeah, I think that's really super important. What would you like people to take away from this podcast on American Heart Month?

Representative Corey Paris: 25:12

Well just when you think you don't have a heart, go to your cardiologist and check to see if you have a PFO. You might be you might be shocked. Uh, no. But seriously, you know, I think there are three things, first, being even if you think that it's not important to go to a specialist, go to a specialist, because you'll find out more about yourself than you probably knew before, and it's safer to be than to be sorry. Two, we have to do all that we possibly can to advocate for ourselves, not only in the political sphere in a mindful and and rational way, but also in the world of health equity as well. Because one wrong decision or one I'll think about it. I'll talk about it later, or maybe it's not that crazy. You're one way. You're one gaslight away from not being here with your family. And lastly, I think the biggest takeaway as people are listening to this is that whether you are a bleeding heart liberal or a bleeding heart conservative, just have a bleeding heart for people. And I think that is the thing that we have to put in everything that we do is the courage and the ability to use our hearts for good. And so I hope that this month and every month would be heart Awareness Month, because it's really what's going to keep our world a better place.

Nancy Barrow: 26:39

And what advice would you give someone who may have gone through what you went through, Tia, not getting any answers, and you know, as someone who experienced some bias until they knew who you were. What advice would you give someone who has to really be their best advocate for themselves?

Representative Corey Paris: 27:04

One you're not crazy. You feel what you feel. Your body feels what it feels. Medicine is changing second to second every day, and there's a medical term that I stole from the West Wing because Abby Bartlett had mentioned this to Jed when Leo McGarry had a heart attack, and she said, time is muscle, and so you have to use every bit of time to build up your muscle. And so if you're able to do that effectively, you will be stronger, not only for yourself, but for other people. And you'll catch things in other people that they may not know about themselves. And so I think it's really important to just know that as the medical field is evolving, you know, doctors are experts in their fields, but the experts in fields aren't right 100% of the time. And so it is important for us to use every bit of resources, medical journals, help groups to know what's going on. I mean, I had multiple conversations from people all over this country who had experienced the same exact thing that I had experienced, and they said to me that the surgery, some said the surgery was a piece of cake. Others said that it was, it was drastically different than what had been explained to them, and so you're not going to have a one size fits all in this world or in this lifetime, and that's what makes you so unique and so special.

Nancy Barrow: 28:35

Any final thoughts on Connecticut paid leave that you want to share?

Representative Corey Paris: 28:39

I think that what we have to do, above all else, is to show that this is supporting working class communities. It's advocating for families, and we have to expand awareness, ensure the sustainability around this program, and build upon the success. And so it's all around educating the public, advocating for the policies that work, that prove that PFML is smart, compassionate and motivating, and then using those closing personal stories from people who have benefited from it. The last thing I'll say is that paid family and medical leave is all about dignity and security. It's about giving people the chance to navigate their life's challenges and and to do so without compromising their financial stability or well being. And so I know for me and for hundreds of 1000s of others across the country and certainly in our state, my own journey through recovery has only underscored the value of this program, and I'm proud to be a champion of it, and I'm proud that Connecticut is at the forefront of it.

Nancy Barrow: 29:40

Well, I'm proud that you're serving the people of Connecticut. I wish you were serving a bigger portion of it. Maybe that's maybe that's in your future,

Representative Corey Paris: 29:48

as long as the boss says, yes, that's finance.

Nancy Barrow: 29:51

Thank you Connecticut representative, Corey Paris, for joining me on the paid leave podcast. Thank you continued good health to you, and congratulations. On your engagement to Symphonie, and what a wonderful and exciting time for you.

Representative Corey Paris: 30:04

Thank you so much. We're really excited, and I hope that my heart can withstand a lot of dancing between now and September 20. You have

Nancy Barrow: 30:12

time to work on it. And let me just say I will be the first to tell you that when, when, and if you do have children, Connecticut paid leave is here for you and Symphonie with 12 weeks of bonding leave.

Representative Corey Paris: 30:24

Thank you. Thank you.

Nancy Barrow: 30:26

It was such a pleasure speaking with you, and good luck in the 2025 legislative session.

Representative Corey Paris: 30:31

Thank you.

Nancy Barrow: 30:31

For more information or to apply for benefits, please go to ctpaidleave.org. This has been another edition of The Paid Leave Podcast. Please like and subscribe so you'll be notified about new podcasts that become available. Connecticut Paid Leave is a public act with a personal purpose. I'm Nancy Barrow, and thanks for listening.