A Canadian woman, who was suffering from a series of mini-strokes, may have saved her own life by recording her stroke with a selfie.
In April, Stacey Yepes started experiencing symptoms of a stroke; her face was going numb and she was having trouble speaking. After the symptoms had subsided, Stacey went to the emergency room to be checked out by doctors. The doctors examined Stacey and told her that they thought the symptoms were simply stress related and gave her tips on how to cope with stress.
A couple days later, Stacey was driving to work when she started feeling the numbness in her face again. Determined to make the doctors understand what was going on, Stacey immediately pulled over and started recording her symptoms. In the video, you can clearly see that something is wrong with Stacey’s face; she is unable to smile or lift her arm. Yepes showed the video to her co-workers, who urged her to go to a different hospital.
“I think it was just to show somebody, because I knew it was not stress-related,” Yepes said. “And I thought if I could show somebody what was happening, they would have a better understanding.”
Stacey then took the video to another doctor, who diagnosed her with transient ischemic attack, otherwise known as a mini-stroke, that was caused by plaque build up in her arteries. The diagnosis was confirmed by an MRI scan.
“In all my years treating stroke patients, we’ve never seen anyone tape themselves before,” Dr. Cheryl Jaigobin, the stroke neurologist at the Toronto Western Hospital’s stroke center said. “Her symptoms were compelling, and the fact she stopped and found a way to portray them in such a visual fashion, we were all touched by it.”
Stacey is currently feeling better and is taking a combination of cholesterol-lowering medications and blood thinners. She hopes to be able to return to her job sometime in July.
Image via YouTube
