Stroke Awareness

May is national Stroke Awareness Month.  Remember FAST when it comes to strokes.

F = Face – Does the face look uneven?   Ask the person to smile.

A = Arm – Is one arm hanging down?  Ask the person to raise both arms.

S = Speech – Is the speech slurred?  Ask the person to repeat a simple sentence.  

T = Time – Call 911 NOW.

There are a lot of things to say about a stroke.  I knew I was having a stroke.  Lots of people have asked me how I knew.  I had headaches for a long time so I had educated myself on headaches.  In the course of that process I knew that headaches were a sign of strokes and consequently learned about strokes.  I’m not saying all headaches are a sign of strokes but if you have headaches or migraines get it checked out.  I had an AVM which caused my stroke.  I had the AVM completely removed sometime later.   I have had NO headaches since the stroke. (Not all AVMs result in a stroke.)  My understanding is that AVMs are not hereditary but they are congenital.  Matt is a First Responder so he recognized the signs.  I was asked to do a version of the the arm test.

One of the things they say about strokes is “time is brain”.  Matt called 911 immediately and I was at the hospital probably 20 minutes after I had the stroke. Strokes are a medical emergency.  The really good news is that the brain can keep learning. So even though I lost the skill of walking as a result of the stroke, I can relearn.

There are two causes of strokes.  (Like when we think about wine, think white wine and red wine.)  One is an ischemic stroke (blood clot/white wine) and the other is a hemorrhagic stroke (bleeding stroke/red wine) and AVMs fall in the second category of hemorrhagic.  Most strokes are ischemic strokes.  Either way strokes are a medical emergency and are a significant cause of long term disability.

There is a World Stroke Day in the fall.  One of the websites promoting that has a statistic that 1 in 6 people world wide will have a stroke.  I think that number is astounding.  We see more young people saying they had a stroke.  I don’t think strokes are occurring with more frequency, I just think we’re recognizing them more.   Here are some statistics about strokes from the National Stroke Association.

• Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States
• Strokes can happen to anyone at any time, regardless of race, sex or age
• Approximately 55,000 more women than men have a stroke each year
• A stroke occurs every 40 seconds
• Two million brain cells die every minute during stroke, increasing risk of permanent brain damage, disability or death

A couple of years ago Peninsula Stroke Association had Dr. Michael De Georgia from the Cleveland Clinic as a guest speaker.  He’s the author of Struck by the Hand of God.  Fascinating account of world leaders (Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and others) who had strokes and what if they had been treated today.  Would history be different?