Doctors almost sent Kris home with a migraine. Then her whole face went numb
On the day of his stroke, Kris Burford remembers feeling exhausted, as if he couldn’t wait for the day to end.
The then-30-year-old primary school teacher attributed her exhaustion to being a working mother with young children and tried to focus on getting through the final hours of the day. But then something strange happened.
“I thought I was writing on the board,” Burford explains, “but I looked at the board and I was actually writing further down.” “I couldn’t lift my arm to write where I wanted.”
He missed a simple word he was trying to spell for first grade and asked a student to get help from the office.
“I couldn’t move or talk on the right side of my body,” Burford says. “Then the school called an ambulance.”
Burford was taken to Caboolture Hospital. When he arrived, he said his symptoms had subsided and his condition was “pretty normal.”
“[They thought] “I just had a migraine,” he says.
“They were getting ready to discharge me but I was on the phone with my wife at the time and started talking complete nonsense. My whole face felt numb and my tongue felt really big and swollen.
“Finally they did a CT scan on me and I had a [blood] The clot completely blocks one side of my brain.
Around 50,000 Australians suffer a stroke every year, costing the country’s healthcare system around $5 billion.
The two main types of stroke (ischemic or hemorrhagic) are caused by impaired blood flow to the brain, and treating both is time-critical. The sooner blood flow is restored, the lower the risk of brain damage, permanent disability or death.
On the day of his stroke, Burford’s luck turned both ways.
By the time he was correctly diagnosed and taken to Brisbane for treatment, he had missed the narrow window for clot-busting drugs to be administered. But in preparation for surgery, a second CT scan showed that the clot had dispersed on its own with minimal damage to the affected brain area.
“There was a time when I was tired because when your brain is damaged the fatigue is crazy,” he says.
“But other than that, I was very, very lucky.”
University of Queensland neuroscientist and PhD candidate Chantelle Jackson says many stroke patients, especially those living in regional and remote communities, are significantly affected by delayed treatment.
That’s one factor motivating the research project: Developing a tool as simple as glasses or a listening device that could help stimulate brain cells and increase blood flow during the critical early period after a stroke.
“You can think of it as a kind of chorus, so after a stroke the neurons, the brain cells, don’t fire properly, it becomes chaotic, a mess of tones,” Jackson explains.
“Stimulation helps these neurons fire together in the intended oscillatory pattern, helping to restore synchronization between nerve populations…when neurons fire properly, they are less likely to die.
“So when you have more neurons, you’re going to get more blood flow to those areas.”
In February, Jackson was awarded a Westpac Future Leaders Scholarship to fund his research, and he will work with neuroscientist Dr. He will work with Matilde Balbi.
“In a stroke, less blood reaches a certain area of the brain, and if the blood cannot carry oxygen and nutrients to that particular part of the brain, all brain cells die,” says Balbi.
“When we try to stimulate the brain with our intervention, we are trying to rescue this degenerative process.”
Balbi says preclinical trials using mice have shown promising results. The next step is to test potential treatments on humans.
“This [is a] A non-invasive form of stimulation. For this reason [it could be] “It’s visual, like glasses, but it’s also auditory, so headphones,” he explains.
“We don’t need to drill anything into the brain, it’s really as simple as wearing a screen and headphones in front of you, which could potentially improve motor function and cognition.”
It was later determined that the cause of Burford’s stroke was a hole in his heart. While the risk of another stroke is low, he supports any research that might help patients, especially those far from metropolitan health care.
“We’re in the countryside on Kilcoy Mountain [in the Somerset Region]and it took quite a long time for the ambulance to get there.
“So if people are aware of the signs and symptoms of stroke and the technology is there, then it could be lifesaving for someone.”
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