Hailey Bieber thanks Eisenhower Medical Center staff following 'ministroke' in Palm Springs

Model Hailey Bieber expressed her gratitude to the staff of Eisenhower Health in a video posted Wednesday following a health scare in March that was caused by a small blood clot in her brain.

"Now that it's all done, I feel so much relief and I feel so grateful to all of the doctors at Eisenhower Medical Center who took care of me," Bieber said in the video.

In the 12-minute video, Bieber recounted the scare she suffered on March 10 in Palm Springs. Bieber said she was eating breakfast with her husband, singer Justin Bieber, and having a "normal day and normal conversation." Suddenly, she felt "this really weird sensation that traveled down my arm from my shoulder all the way down to my fingertips," which made them feel numb.

When her husband asked her if she was OK, she said she couldn't speak.

"The right side of my face started drooping," Bieber, 25, said. "I couldn't get a sentence out."

Her singer husband asked someone to call 9-1-1, and a doctor was available nearby who started asking her questions and testing her arms.

The facial drooping lasted for about 30 seconds, Hailey Bieber said. And while she knew the answers in her head to questions such as "Do you know where you are?" and "Do you know your name?" the words could not come out, she said.

By the time she got to the emergency room at the Rancho Mirage hospital, she said she felt "pretty much back to normal," and she could talk and wasn't experiencing issues with her face or arm.

Following scans, health care workers discovered the model suffered a small blood clot in her brain that was labeled and categorized as a transient ischemic attack. It is a temporary period of symptoms similar to those of a stroke, according to the Mayo Clinic. A TIA usually lasts a few minutes and doesn't cause permanent damage, but about one in three people who have had a TIA will eventually have a stroke. About half occur within one year of the "ministroke."

After she was discharged from Eisenhower Health, she went to UCLA for further testing. She recently underwent a procedure to close a small opening between the two upper chambers of her heart, and she said she is recovering "really well, really fast."

In terms of what could have caused the TIA, Bieber said she recently started taking birth control pills "which I should have never been on because I am somebody who suffered from migraines anyway and I just did not talk to my doctor about this." Her recent COVID-19 illness may also have been a contributing factor, she said, as well as a recent flight to Paris.

The model still found some lightheartedness in the difficult moment.

"When they were calling into the hospital to explain what they were bringing in, they were like, 'I have a 30-year-old female,' and I was like 'I'm 25,'" she said with a laugh. "I had to make sure that they weren't going to age me five years for no reason, you know?"

Ema Sasic covers entertainment and health in the Coachella Valley. Reach her at ema.sasic@desertsun.com or on Twitter @ema_sasic.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Hailey Bieber thanks Eisenhower Health staff following health scare