Hailey Bieber Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
A “life-changing event.” Hailey Bieber (née Baldwin) marked the one-year anniversary of suffering a blood clot in her brain.
“Can’t believe it’s been 1 year since I suffered a mini-stroke that led my PFO diagnosis,” the model, 26, wrote via Instagram Story on Friday, March 10, reposting her initial social media video about the health scare. “Given that it’s the 1 year mark from such a life-changing event, I wanted to share all the information I’ve learned about PFO and share resources to donate.”
Bieber then uploaded several panels of informational graphics from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA’s medical school about Patent Foramen Ovales (PFO), which is a congenital heart defect.
Courtesy of Hailey Bieber/Instagram
The Rhode founder first revealed her condition in March 2022, noting that she had been hospitalized after a medical emergency.
“On Thursday morning, I was sitting at breakfast with my husband [Justin Bieber] when I started having stroke-like symptoms and was taken to the hospital,” Hailey wrote via her Instagram Story at the time. “They found I had suffered a very small blood clot in my brain, which caused a small lack of oxygen, but my body had passed on its own and I recovered completely within a few hours.”
She continued: “Although this was definitely one of the scariest moments I’ve ever been through, I’m home now and doing well, and I’m so grateful and thankful to all the amazing doctors and nurses who took care of me!”
Stephen Baldwin’s daughter later opened up about her experience in a YouTube video one month later, noting she initially felt a “weird sensation” in her arm.
“It made my fingertips feel really numb and weird,” she recalled in the April 2022 video, explaining the right side of her face also started drooping and she struggled to form words. “It was like my tongue and my mouth could not form sentences. I noticed that when the speech [eventually] came back and I felt like I could talk, as soon as my anxiety would settle in or hit me, it would make my speech feel funny again.”
Hailey and the “Peaches” singer, 29, then drove to the local hospital, where they learned that the beauty entrepreneur had suffered a TIA (Transient Ischemic Attack), which is commonly known as a “mini-stroke.” Additional tests revealed that Hailey had a Grade 5 PFO, a flaplike opening in her heart, and she underwent heart surgery.
“It went very smoothly and I’m recovering really well, really fast,” the Arizona native said in her social media upload last April. “I feel great. The biggest thing I feel, honestly, is I just feel really relieved that we were able to figure everything out, that we were able to get it closed, that I will be able to move on from this really scary situation and just live my life.”
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Justin, who married the social media influencer in 2018, was been his wife’s No. 1 supporter amid the ordeal. “Justin has been worried sick,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly at the time. “[He] feels very out of control of the situation [and he] appreciates her now more than ever.”