Polls only: No discussion

[Loach]

@Biotop

So you are 61 and are out with your wife walking the dogs on a 33f cold afternoon. You do not go more than a half mile but on the way back your right hand and right arm suddenly feel numb. Not the cold kind of numb, but the feeling you get when you lie or sit uncomfortably a long time and your arm or leg “goes to sleep.” It’s sort of tingly and your hand muscles feel clumsy when you try to close your right hand into a fist. It is a new feeling to arise from nothing. Thinking it is some kind of pulled muscle you wait for it to go away but it doesn’t (though sometimes it feels like it is going away). Picking things up is suddenly easier with the left hand rather than picking things up with the right hand. But it’s not like the right hand is useless. Heck it is easy for you to type this long poll post with that fuzzy right hand. And it is possibly your imagination that you feel like the right side of your face feels puffy around the lips and cheek, almost as if you have had a novacaine shot. But nothing is droopy in the face in the mirror. Just your regular old mug.

So it has been 12 or so hours and you have a long physical shift at work tomorrow where they will really need you. Shorthanded, of course, like everywhere. It is also supposed to snow tomorrow which could easily get you stuck up alone in a hotel in Town for a day or two. Not fun.

I’m breaking the rules because this could be serious and because you didn’t put in a choice for go to the doctor now. Weakness Numbness or feelings of weakness on one side of the body is the number one sign of stroke. I learned this the hard way. I woke up and couldn’t move my arm. I thought I pinched a nerve. I took a shower because I had to go to work. When it didn’t get better I had my daughter drive me to the hospital. They didn’t think it was a pinched nerve. Next thing I know I was swept into the ER and soon on a helicopter going to a brain center. I always try to talk myself out of something being seriously wrong sounds like you do too. There is a very good chance its nothing but you should get it checked out right away.

ETA: I was 51 years old when it happened. Its not an age thing.