Carotid artery dissection (CAD) usually doesn't show any symptoms because the other carotid artery supplies the brain with enough blood. CAD shows symptoms when a blood clot, that was formed on a place of dissection, rubs from the artery's wall, get into the brain circulation, and finally sticks in some terminal brain artery. This is called thromboembolia. Thromboembolia in the brain causes an ischemic stroke (brain infarct) that causes permanent brain damage.

Sometimes if the cloth is small, the fibrinolytic system in the blood can dissolve the clot before permanent brain damage occurs. In that case symptoms last only temporally and that condition is called Transient ischemic attack (TIA). TIA and ischemic stroke can have the same symptoms; the only difference is that in ischemic stroke most of the symptoms remain permanent while in TIA they are transient.

I believe that you had TIA.