Francis: I woke up from a nap and I fell down and the wife said, what happened to you, and she said, did you fall down? I go, yes. She says, you don’t look right.

Dr. David Tong: A stroke is a very devastating disease. It’s the leading cause of disability in the world actually and the number three cause of death in the world as well. The time window for treatment of stroke is actually quite short. The FDA approved treatment of stroke is only within the first three hours after symptom onset. So that’s the time the patient was last well.

Francis: The emergency room took me in right away -- immediately.

Dr. David Tong: We are trying to treat the patient past rapidly and as quickly as possible. So we have specialized rapid evaluation and treatment of the patient. The average time that it takes for our patients to be seen by a physician with an acute stroke is ten minutes or less. Within that three hour time window, we can get this medication called TPA, which is a thrombolytic; that is a blood clot dissolving medication in helping the tissue recover from the injury. We can actually look at the blood flow in the brain as well as the blood vessels themselves, and with this procedure we were able to see that he had low blood flow in a certain part of his brain that was causing his symptoms.

Francis: I had no warning signs. In fact, I just had a physical in December and in March everything was doing good.

Dr. David Tong: The problems with stroke is that typically there’s no pain associated with it, and because it’s painless, people think that it will go away on its own.

Francis: If she didn’t tell me to go to the hospital, I would’ve went to sleep if she wasn’t there saying I could shake this off. Lucky she did take me to the hospital.

Dr. David Tong: We like to use the simple and the mnemonic FAST. The “F” stands for face, which is weakness of the face or numbness of the face, “A” stands for arm or leg weakness of numbness, “S” stands for slurred speech or difficulty speaking or loss of speech, and “T” stands for time, which is to say that time is of the essence; that you should get treated as soon as possible after you have these type of symptoms. We emphasize to people that they should get treated as soon as possible after their stroke onset and they should call 911 and be evaluated right away.

Francis: I feel good. I feel like a regular, normal person.

Female: Receiving care at a joint commission certified primary stroke center, like California Pacific Medical Center, can greatly improve your chances of full recovery. In fact, over 50 percent of patients seen for stroke at California Pacific that are urgently treated with thrombolytic therapy are discharged functionally independent. Moreover, we meet or exceed nearly all national standards, guidelines, and benchmarks that may significantly improve long term outcomes for our patients. California Pacific Medical Center, where medicine can transform a body, but going beyond medicine can transform a life.

Watch the video and learn more about stroke care from Dr. Tong, Medical Director, Comprehensive Stroke Care Center.