We had a really close call in the neighborhood this week. My favorite neighbor of all, John, who lives across the street, paused his mower and waved me over yesterday morning as I pulled out of the drive.

"I was in the hospital last week, I had a stroke," he told me. I was amazed, since here he was mowing his lawn. He described feeling numb on his left side, face, hand, leg, and falling and hitting his head on the dresser when he tried to get up. Fortunately his wife heard him fall and took him straight to the emergency room.

This morning I took an extra eggplant from the garden over, and while there, I asked Pearlie what had happened, and congratulated her on the great good sense of getting him immediate care. He came home a few hours later after the ER trip.

She said it was a TIA - a Transient Ischemic Attack. His cholesterol was high, and now he's on medication for that and is taking an aspirin. His weight is normal and for a 75-year-old man, he's still quite active. He mows his own lawn and putters around the yard working on things a lot.

TIA is a warning shot. According to WebMD:

Some people call a transient ischemic attack (TIA) a mini-stroke, because the symptoms are like those of a stroke but do not last long. A TIA happens when blood flow to part of the brain is blocked or reduced, often by a blood clot. After a short time, blood flows again and the symptoms go away. With a stroke, the blood flow stays blocked, and the brain has permanent damage.

A TIA is a warning: It means you are likely to have a stroke in the future. If you think you are having a TIA, call 911. Early treatment can help prevent a stroke. If you think you have had a TIA but your symptoms have gone away, you still need to call your doctor right away.

We are all so lucky that this was only a warning, that John has a treatment in place and will be monitoring his cholesterol.

There are lots of types of strokes, and things that sometimes are mis-diagnosed as strokes. When I was 16 I experienced a disruption in my vision (the normal blind spot became huge) and it took a while for it to settle back to the normal size. My mother was called to school to pick me up, and since it was my vision, she took me to an eye doctor. What they all missed as a symptom was the absolutely horrible, debilitating headache that developed a couple of hours into this, and the sensitivity to light, cigarette smoke (my mother smoked around us regardless of our requests not to, so I hung my head out of the car window on the way home to try to get some relief), etc.

Years later I realized that when the eye doctor diagnosed as a "small stroke" was in fact one form that migraine headaches sometimes take. I literally lived the entire reproductive portion of my life staying away from all hormone birth control because it could bring on a stroke. I always had the hat and sunglasses, to avoid other possible problems.

I passed migraines on to my children, mostly my son, my daughter and I rarely have them, though I do have early warning stages and an occasional aura. But thankfully I didn't have a stroke.

That said, perhaps avoiding some things that could cause strokes was a good thing to do anyway.

I'm sure other Mudcatters have had more than passing contact with strokes, small strokes, TIAs, etc. I thought I'd open the topic to discussion here in one place, rather than scatter it around in other topics.

SRS