Hailey Baldwin thanks fans for their support after opening up about mini-stroke

Hailey Baldwin has thanked her fans for their “kind messages” after she spoke candidly about the health scare that left her hospitalised last month.

The 25-year-old model revealed how much she appreciates her fans and followers’ support in a recent Instagram Story, acknowledging how hearing other people’s “experiences” made her own health scare “feel less scary”.

“Thank you for all the kind messages, and thank you everyone who reached out after yesterday’s video,” she continued. “Hearing so many people share their experiences and having that shared journey with so many have made all of this less scary.”

Baldwin, who is married to Justin Bieber, also received support from her mother-in-law, Pattie Mallette. “Grateful you are recovering well,” she wrote on her Instagram story, along with Baldwin’s video, in which the model had detailed her stroke and the procedure she underwent to close a hole in her heart. “God is good. Thank you for sharing your story. So brave. I love you so much.”

In a video posted to her YouTube channel on Wednesday, Baldwin recalled the “very scary incident” that happened on 10 March, when she was hospitalised after suffering “stroke-like symptoms”.

According to Baldwin, when Bieber tried to speak to her while the pair were having breakfast, she “couldn’t get the words out,” while she also had a “weird sensation” in her arm and the right side of her face had started drooping.

“Definitely the scariest moment of my life. I had so many things running through my head,” she recalled. “The number one thing being ‘I’m having a stroke, I’m really scared, I don’t know what’s going on.’”

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She said that once she got to the emergency room, she was basically “back to normal,” except she “couldn’t talk”. After the doctors ran a few tests, Baldwin said that they discovered that she had a TIA, Transient Ischemic Attack, often called a mini-stroke, due to a blood clot in her brain.

While speaking to doctors at the University of California, Los Angeles about her experience, Baldwin was told the blood clot could have been caused by her birth control, Covid, or a recent flight, as she said that she travelled to “from Paris and back in a really short amount of time”.

In the clip, Baldwin explained that the doctors later learned that she had a PFO, a small opening in her heart that usually closes after birth, which was discovered through a transcranial doppler test.

She said that she underwent a procedure to close the 12 to 13 millimeter hole in her heart, and it went “very smoothly”.

Baldwin concluded her story encouraging anyone who has experienced similar health issues to speak to a doctor.

“I feel very lucky to have had the healthcare resources and family support to be able to deal with this as quickly as I did,” she wrote in a statement at the end of the clip. “I wanted to make this video to share more info and a few resources in the video description below to turn to if you have gone or are going through something similar.”

Bieber, 28, had spoken candidly to fans about his wife’s health scare last month, while making a stop in Denver, Colorado for his tour. During his concert, the singer noted how Baldwin was “strong” and “doing okay”.

“But it’s been scary, you know, it’s been really scary,” he said. “But I know for a fact that God has her in the palm of his hands, and that’s a good thing.”