He was about two minutes into a speech at a Democratic summit in Western Maryland when his neck began throbbing. He felt lightheaded. His ears started popping like he was on an airplane.

So Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) asked himself: Should he tell the audience he wasn’t feeling well and walk off the stage? Or stick it out? “So I powered through,” Van Hollen said in his office Tuesday, his first interview since he suffered a stroke last month at the Western Maryland Democratic Summit.