In case you didn't know what a stroke looks like:
Face: asymmetrical, have them smile
Arms: one weaker than the other
Speech: slurred or unable to speak
Time: time is brain, the longer you wait, the more permanent the damage.
time is brain
This gave me a stroke
It's actually a quite common saying; because the most important factor is minimizing time to treatment. Every second a part of the brain dies. After a few minutes there will be significant permanent brain loss. (according to some sources on average around 2 Million brain cells per minute)
Thats also why STEMO exist. They're special ambulances with a CT and teleradiologocal appliances (meaning the supporting radiologist is not necessarily onboard but joins remote) and medication and specialized stroke-medics. Because a regular ambulance will cost the patient too much time - and to much (living) brain matter
Have them smile is very key for the face one. Faces aren't perfectly symmetric. People often use the phrase facial droop which is a somewhat misleading phrase. Older individuals with looser skin and wrinkles there may be a "droop" but not otherwise. It's really the lack of activation of the lower facial muscles on one side that helps you tell. Facial muscles help move the side of your mouth both up and down, and they both get weak in a stroke affecting the face. So unless someone has a lot of loose skin it'll probably just look kind of flat. So again, have them smile, the inability to elevate the corner of the mouth or decreased ability to do so is key.
There's also a lot of misleading graphics out there with upper facial weakness too, like inability to close the eye. That can happen with certain strokes, but it's much more common for only the lower face muscles to be weak, with the eye and forehead muscles being fine.
Here's a good example of what it'll usually look like irl:
This is someone trying to smile, the side affected by the stroke would be the person's right side (left side of the picture), not the side that's "drooping" that's actually the normal side.
I had a pharmacist that also include BE as well. Balance problems and Eye changes.
Okay I'll go to the hospital but what should I do with the stroke victim?
Pray for them.
Then grab me a mcrib on the way home, plz.
You just leaked the GOPs 2024 political platform with that statement.
I know this is a meme, but that acronym is very important. I also learned from a pharmacist another version: BE FAST
Balance
Eye changes
Face droop
Arm drift
Speech change
Time
Dude was having a stroke trying to spell hospital.
It's spelled hosprintal
I had a stroke in my sleep. My dumbass had to be convinced to go the next day.
Well, to be fair, your brain was probably damaged.
I know you're half joking, but it definitely is to some degree. I can feel some things are different. It aged me a few decades overnight for sure.
It's not uncommon. Especially strokes affecting the non dominant side of the brain, people often don't realize there's anything wrong. Takes other people around you to tell to you that something is wrong.
You shouldn't feel bad, it could happen to anyone. Just depends on where the stroke is in the brain if someone is capable of recognizing it themselves or not.
An especially difficult one for people to detect on their own is strokes that are affecting visual centers of the brain. People expect they'll see black or something. But you don't see anything at all, field of vision is just narrower. It's like, you don't see black out the back of your head normally right? Usually if people notice anything it's that they're bumping or tripping into stuff on one side, or like driving and get in a car accident because they're not perceiving one half of what's in front of them.
I woke up blind in one eye. It was obvious something was wrong. I'm just stubborn. You're right about vision being narrower. It was fascinating looking at my blind eye in the mirror.
My vision was randomly going cross-eyed for two weeks before it happened. Also small circular headache in the back corner of my head.
If anyone has those symptoms in the future, get to the hostptintal like the meme says.
Ah, if it was truly blind in one eye that would be a retinal artery occlusion which is a stroke equivalent, just affecting the retina itself instead of the brain. That one you can see black sometimes. If it's the visual brain centers in the occipital lobe, it'll be half the vision in each eye, and that's the one where field of view is just narrower and you don't really perceive any dark area.
But as you said, point is this stuff is confusing, if any doubt, go to the hospital. Doctors would much rather a false alarm than people showing up too late to do anything.
You know your stuff. Corated artery is also 100 blocked. That's fun too.
One small correction for you though. You don't see anything when the eye is gone. No black no flesh color. Everything was just kinda shifted to the other side. It took a few months to get the top half of that eyes vision back. Now it's all black, except it turns bright ass white when I close my eyes. Good times good times.
You're right, I was clarifying sometimes with the eye you might perceive black as opposed to the brain where you generally won't, but it may not be universally true. Sorry that happened though, strokes suck.
Hospintal
OP is not going FAST enough!
Call 911 cause ambulance can bypass a lot of steps if you pass the criteria for clot evacuation for stroke or heart attack.
Best case scenario is ambulance to operating room and you go home in 1 to 2 days.
Comedy gold metal here.
Correct, gold is a metal.
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