Imagine this: you are at the movies, more precisely in the bathroom stall at the movies, and the woman next door crashes against the partition and slides to the floor, mumbling incoherently. What do you do? I can tell you because that was me; I was having a stroke.
I had just finished seeing a film with friends when I peeled off to the ladies room. One of them, Beth, a veteran nurse, caught a glimpse of my face and turned quickly to follow. I hung my purse on the stall door and started to open the side buttons on my pants. It was clumsy; my fingers felt like thick sausages. I was getting urgent, but all my fiddling just threw me off balance. My left shoulder fell hard against the stall door. As I tried to straighten up and focus on my buttons my left leg went out from underneath me. I quickly shoved my right leg into the base of the toilet bowl while digging my left shoulder into my bulky purse on the door, temporarily propping me up. Suddenly, my body was leaning at a forty-five degree angle to the floor. This was odd and embarrassing, but I wasn’t scared until my purse strap broke and what little upright support I had disappeared. Whoosh. I fell like a dress off a hanger into a clump on the floor.
It was as if a light switch had gone off on my left side. I had no idea why.
At this point, my friends were calling, “Are you ok?”
“I am fine I just have to sit up,” I said, which sounded to them like, “Mfinne, yost hap tasith goup.”
Beth went commando: “She’s had a stroke, we’re calling 911.”
My tongue felt thick, but my head was clear. Why would a perfectly healthy, physically fit 57-year-old woman be having a stroke—wasn’t it an old person’s disease? Or for someone with weight problems? There was nothing wrong with me. I just needed a little help up.
Outside the stall, people knew otherwise. Paramedics and policemen had arrived and I was on my way to the emergency room.
Once at the hospital, an IV was quickly put in my arm. The doctors and nurses huddled around repeatedly asking me to say my name, lift my arms up together, and then my legs. They asked me to smile; no one smiled back. After a short while, I could move my arms and legs as commanded. And I could talk clearly. Before I knew I was having a stroke, I was already surviving it.
What a near miss.
It’s great that we see pink ribbons everywhere promoting breast cancer awareness, but the truth is women are at five times the risk of having a stroke than getting breast cancer, and stroke kills twice as many women every year. Yet, most of us can’t name the causes or the symptoms.
The first thing to understand about stroke is that it is not a heart attack. It is a brain attack, and it’s the fifth leading cause of death and a leading cause of disability in the U.S. In layman’s terms, it is either triggered by a burst blood vessel, also known as a hemorrhage, or by a backup of blood caused by a clot. Hemorrhages, which flood blood into the brain’s tissues, account for about 10 percent of all strokes and most of the fatalities.
Much more common is an ischemic stroke. This is caused by a blood clot that comes from somewhere else in the body, finds its way into the brain and gums up the works, starving brain cells of oxygen and nutrients. Usually, but not always painful, it can cause severe damage if not treated quickly. I had this kind of stroke.
Here is the good news: most strokes are, by and large, preventable. The same risk factors for heart attacks apply to strokes: increased age, smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high levels of cholesterol. Lifestyle choices such as stopping smoking, losing weight and exercising regularly make all the difference, as do regular doctor checkups.
But prevention isn’t always enough. None of the above causes applied to me. My stroke was triggered by undiagnosed irregular heartbeat. I have atrial fibrillation (Afib), and I am not alone. At least 2.2 million people in the U.S. have Afib according to the Centers for Disease Control, and many more may have it, not feel it, and like me be perfectly healthy. As a group, we are at five times greater risk of stroke than the general population. Fortunately, doctors can diagnose most Afib cases and prescribe a treatment program,
While not always preventable, most strokes can be survived with quick action. And I mean quick. What nobody tells you about stroke is what symptoms to look for so you can act fast, because speed makes all the difference. Once a victim is quickly identified and moved to an emergency room, they can get an IV full of a naturally occurring enzyme called Tissue Plasminogen Activator, or TPA. It’s a brilliant clot-buster, but there’s a caveat: the treatment window is just under two hours, after which the options and the outcomes get much worse.
“You were very lucky,” I was told again and again. “It was a miracle.” But the real miracle was that I was diagnosed and treated FAST. Which just happens to be the acronym the American Stroke Association (ASA) wants you to remember:
F: Face drooping
A: Arm weakness
S: Speech difficulty
T: Time to call 911.
This information is so important that the ASA created a mobile warning app, downloadable at www.strokeassociation.org.
As for me, I can’t say I was left unmarked by my stroke. Three years later, I take a blood thinner every day and I am still a tad weaker on my left side. And I can’t let go of the scary what-ifs. What if I had been alone? What if I couldn’t reach my phone? What if no one knew what was happening to me, with time in the balance? Still, I am grateful for the wake-up call. And I will know what to do if a stroke happens to me or someone else: act FAST.
Sources:
American Heart Association: heart.org
American Stroke Association: http://www.strokeassociation.org
Centers for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/stroke.fact.htm
Nora Slattery is a writer and stroke survivor living in Topanga.
By Nora Slattery