No you're not, not yet, but I did. Last week. It's bad.
No sympathy needed or wanted, and especially no guff about "God's plan" or "lucky," but I learned something I really needed to know beforehand that they DON'T put in the Public Service Announcements, at least here in Montana. All I want from you is for you to read, learn, and maybe save yourself. And maybe if you're a strokee, tell me if I'm right.
The official "code" for stroke as on TV is, F A S T -- Face, Arms, Speech, Time. And even though my blood work shows nothing that would make me a "stroke candidate," I paid attention with the intent of spotting it and helping others get to the hospital, as some of my friends have stroked, some okay, some really not. So I've memorized FAST, right?
So, last Monday night at about 4 AM, I'm on deadline, cranking hard, up on coffee and Copenhagen, stress headache and my eyes get "computer fuzz," which I've had before, almost exactly the same way, same time, two or three times in the last two years. Heck with it, I'll walk home. Halfway through the walk, I feel dizzy and can't see squat, I got lost on a path I can easily walk in full dark with my eyes closed. Got home, thought maybe I should FAST myself, and I did. Recited the Preamble without a hitch, did a couple pushups, checked my face (I could only see half at once), did a drunk test on myself, I was fine, not a bobble. "Heckit, I'll sleep this off as usual." Couple Aleve, to bed, as I'd been fine after sleeping things off before. Maybe I should have chugged some aspirin, because in the AM I was still blind in half my field of vision in both eyes and aspirin is the first thing they give you in the ER. Still am. Sucks.
Off to the ER, too late. 20 grand later, with a couple of snapshots of my head the only take-home besides the bill and the "You've Had A Stroke You Poor Thing" handouts.
In sorting the handouts, there's, you bet, a FAST card, like that's gonna help now? But in the full size sheets, there's another checklist, this one translates as B E F A S T. Well, Bang Me Thuot.
The B and E stand for BALANCE and EYES. Bang Me Thuot, TWICE.
With plenty of time to contemplate, I finally realized the FAST narrative is focused on spotting strokes in others, not in yourself. Had I known about the BE part before FAST, maybe I wouldn't be utterly screwed for the rest of my life, because the B and E is what happens to YOU when YOU'RE HAVING A FACKING STROKE.
And it's especially important for us in the outdoors where there's nobody around to help.
First, the B. If you're walking around, stone cold sober and you start feeling a bar buzz, that's your BALANCE. I felt like I'd had two drinkies, and I hadn't touched a drop in two weeks prior. PAY ATTENTION.
Second, the E. That's eyes. We've all had fuzz outs and tunnel vision, right? That's migraine, because it's a ROUND fuzzout that looks circular, while your center is still okay. Kind of like crawling the scope wrong, that's not a stroke.
In a stroke, you lose ONE side or the other off the vertical crosshair, you can only see half the prairie dog, and BOTH EYES blind in the same part of the sight picture of each. You'll lose the horizontal crosshair on either side, not both, of the vertical. The vertical line between "see" and "blind" is unmistakable, and will move with your eyes.
Put another way, if you look straight at something and can only see half of what you're looking at and expecting to see, split vertically, YOU"RE HAVING A STROKE.
What do you do? Swat aspirin, call help and get to the ER by the fastest possible means, warp speed, period, or you are F0ed beyond belief. Utterly f ed. The life I envisioned for the years I have left is GONE.
Thing is, if I'd ever heard of BE FAST, not just FAST, I'd be telling you about a close call. Don't be me, BE FAST. I slipped through the "public education" cracks on this one, and it's a gaping canyon with my life splattered on the rocks at the bottom. Trust me, the public health/public misinformation "experts" who decided FAST didn't need to BEFAST, or that the public is too stupid to memorize BEFAST, will feel my pain, very soon. I fully intend to quietly find out who was responsible for the production of that advertisement, and they will never, ever forget me.
