Stanford Stroke Awareness Month: BE FAST 

To be fair my friend, it’s not always necessarily to used clot breaking medication. My stepdad had a stroke today, it was only a small one, no doubt a warning. Just thankfully his fast acting colleagues knew what was happening to him, got him into a medical room (he works in a large school) and called an ambulance. In the time he spent at the hospital, around 5 1/2 hours all that had gone wrong with him, wobbliness, dizziness, slurred speech etc return back to normal. I don’t know what medication they treat him with while he was at the hospital (but in all honesty, it didn’t sound right very much. I’m not slating the hospital there, I’m guessing he didn’t need much treatment). I collected him and as much as he isn’t allowed to drive for a month and he has to be monitored as an outpatient, they actually did allow him to pick his car up from work. I was going to do that myself in the morning, but having never driven an automatic before I was going to bring him with me (and my mum drive us to his work), but they said he could pick it up as long as he drove it straight home and my mum sat at the side of him and of course I stayed behind him for the whole journey to make sure he was ok and he was. But other than being extremely tired he actually feels well now and all they did was give him aspirin (to take him I mean) they didn’t even do an MRI on him & no clot breaking items (I’m guessing they gave him aspirin but he didn’t mention it, but he did say there were no special medications given to him), it was all blood pressure and heart monitoring (ECG) that they did. I’m shocked they didn’t scan him, (but I have a bone disease where I have titanium ribs that constantly shatter, one of them Shattered and the other hospital in that city, Leeds, kept me a whole weekend and still couldn’t arrange me a scan for the Monday, despite having the equipment downstairs barely being used, so they are pretty useless in the north of England scanning people in emergencies!) I suppose we are pretty lucky that Covid is calmer and the ambulances aren’t quite as busy and he wasn’t too far from the hospital in the city he works in (Leeds) next to the city we all live in (Bradford) our local hospital (BRI) was a little far for them to take him. which is fine because the hospitals in the city works in are actually better equipped anyway, so you don’t necessarily always need a clot breaker and you can return back to normal within hours of it happening- each case is different of course, but I just suppose acting as quickly as possible and not ignoring the symptoms is the best thing to do. Unfortunately a family friend’s mother had a stroke at work years ago and they sent her home, she rested at home until her husband returned home from work and figured out what happened to her and took her to hospital, but unfortunately too much time had elapsed by then she ended up needing constant care after and with Alzheimer’s in her 50s because no fast action was taken. She died incredibly young, so certainly time is most precious & don’t panic too much over it, just make sure that all avenues are getting that person to medical assistance.

Strmewker to walking