CHARLESTON, W.Va.— Every 40 seconds someone in the United States has a stroke, and on World Stroke Day doctors and survivors are encouraging everyone to learn the signs of what a stroke is and what it looks like.
World Stroke Day is held on October 29 every year to help raise awareness of strokes and the burden it places on people who have suffered them and the ones who are indirectly impacted. Strokes are the number five leading cause of death in the country and the number two leading cause of death in the world.
Stroke survivor, Elizabeth Ferrell, 45, suffered a stroke caused by a blood clot in January of last year after she had minor surgery.
She was on her way to her daughter’s swim meet, when she started to not feel good. She told her family to go on to the meet while she went home.
“I went to sleep and then when I woke back up, I was feeling some discomfort, I wasn’t feeling well,” Ferrell said. “And I called one of my friends, I said can you come over here. And then went back to sleep and when I woke up the second time, there it was. I was starting to get numb on the right side, I could hardly move. It was scary.”
Her friend ended up taking her to the ER, where she stayed over the weekend and when the doctors finally told her what happened she wasn’t aware of what strokes were.
“They came in Monday, they said that you had a stroke, we’ve got to get you up. I was like a what, what’s a stroke, I wasn’t aware at the time,” Ferrell said. “I was just like okay, so they preceded to get me up and at that time they didn’t tell me what kind of stroke I had because they didn’t know for sure.”
During the month she was in the hospital she started her rehab journey, where she had to learn how to talk, walk and move again, because the stroke had taken her ability to do those things. She said that each stage of the rehab process was slow and she’s still working towards becoming better every day.
And she said looking back on that day, she knows now what symptoms she had that led to her having the stroke.
“I had the face drooping; my balance was a little off. Was my eyesight good, yeah, did I have arm weakness not really, but my speech was getting slurred, it was getting slurred, it was those little actions,” Ferrell said.
After her experience, she said that it is extremely important for people to know and understand what a stroke is and how to identify if someone is experiencing a stroke.
“It is important to know what a stroke is, just be mindful of B.E.F.A.S.T, remember your eyesight, your face drooping, your balance, your arms, your speech,” Ferrell said.
And if you want to know what a stroke could potentially look like on you, the American Stroke Association has what they call the F.A.S.T experience on their website, where you upload a picture of yourself, and it will show you stroke symptoms on you.
To learn more about what kinds of strokes there are and the warning signs, you can visit the American Stroke Association’s website here.