How anyone can recognize a stroke

This is a bit of an aside from the usual trivialities of my blog, but it is something I heard about whilst I was in Australia, and I think it is really cool. Some researchers funded by the American Stroke Association have come up with a very easy test to tell if someone has had a stroke. I have checked up on the details of this, and it is genuine ( Press Release, abstract from the clinical paper) and the test is very effective (sensitivity 93.9%, specificity 80.0%).

Both my grandmothers had strokes. It makes a huge difference if the symptoms are recognised early: people have been known to have small falls, but to carry on as usual, and then die within 24 hours; this was because the fall had been caused by a stroke, the symptoms were not recognised and no treatment was given. The remainder of this post I repeat verbatim:

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

1. Ask the individual to SMILE.
2. Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
3. Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (e.g. It is sunny out today)

If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call for medical assistance immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

After discovering that a group of non-medical volunteers could identify facial weakness, arm weakness and speech problems, researchers urged the general public to learn the three questions. They presented their conclusions at the American Stroke Association's annual meeting last February. Widespread use of this test could result in prompt diagnosis and treatment of the stroke and prevent brain damage.

Back with more cheerful news soon,


Ali

Colouring in the globe

Hi,

Lisa sent me a link to a great site: the site has a list of countries and you check off the ones you have been to, and it makes a coloured-in map of the places you have been in the world. My one, for example, is below. I really need to visit Ireland and Portugal though so I can colour in Western Europe properly!

You can create your own visited country map here!

Ali

Melbourne, Hong Kong, and finally, Oxford

The last time I wrote it was Friday 14th April and I had three days left in Melbourne before returning to Oxford via Hong Kong. Well I’m definitely settled back in Oxford now, so I should make some effort to bring the story to date.

One of the highlights of my last days in Melbourne was a trip to Koko Black’s. This is Belgian Chocolatier that has a number of branches around the world. The hot chocolate (middle picture) is very tasty and as you can see, the presentation is pretty good too. One is encouraged to order a tray of chocolate delicacies to go with the drink (left). This tray includes chocolate ice cream, chocolate mousse, two chocolates, a biscuit, and a small chocolate muffin – all very tasty. You can even see them making the chocolates in the back of the shop – the liquid white, milk, and dark chocolate can be seen in the rightmost picture.

The same day we visited Koko Black’s in Melbourne, I met up with my friend Emily – who saved myself and Rachel from many mishaps on our trip to Emei Shan. It was good to catch up. The next day, I went with Kate, Obi and Thea on a cruise along the Maribyrnong river. This is a somewhat minor river - the tour included Flemington Racecourse, housing, Victoria University of Technology, Essendon Golf Course..., but all presented with very good humour. We followed this by a barbecue – my last one for a while I’m afraid. Then I had to leave horribly early the next morning to fly back to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong was fun, but on what was my third visit, I decided I like the place than I did at first. It’s definitely a very striking place due to the extraordinary fusion of cultures and ideas in a very small area. I had even thought I might like to live there, but now it seems very small and I think one could get something of a feeling of being trapped there. The weather wasn’t nearly as good as the first time I went, so there was definitely less of the ‘tropical island paradise’ about the place, but asside of the weather something else failed to click this time. I’d definitely recommend a visit, but I’m not sure I would want to live there.

Whilst in Hong Kong I was lucky enough to meet up with Elisa from Princeton and we went from dinner with John, who I knew less well from Princeton and writes for The Standard. John was a little late for dinner as he was just finishing and submitting an article, and really cool thing was I then read the article in the paper over breakfast the next day - that just strikes me as being very impressive. I visited Lantau Island and the giant Buddha there (pictured right) – I’ve seen a lot of giant Buddha’s now, somehow they all claim to be the largest one in the world by inserting lots of conditions. for example this is “The largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha in the world”. I went to the New Territories and visited a town with lots of fishing and seafood restaurants. This was very cool as not only did the restaurants themselves have a huge array of live seafood, but the boats were coming in too, with all sorts of crates of crazy stuff on them.

One very cool thing in Hong Kong is free internet terminals. These exist in many underground stations and in shopping centres. They are just there for people to walk up to and check their email or surf the web. There’s a 15 minute time limit on them to make sure people don't hog them. I think it’s fantastic. They all seem to be sponsored by companies so they don’t even cost the hosts (e.g. sebway stations) money.

So now I’m back in Oxford. It’s Trinity Term: time for lots of punting and sailing – in fact, today I managed to do both - the DPhil’s an easy life! ;) The research is coming on OK and the teaching load is relatively low this term as it’s many revision classes for the lucky people who have prelims and finals. My role as IT officer on the MCR committee, has well and truly started so I’ve been doing more work on the website, learning PHP and generally doing the other stuff that comes with being on the committee (meetings, brunch shifts, bar shifts, cleaning the bar). It’s all good fun though and it’s good to have some sort of influence over what the MCR does.

Well it’s a little late and I think this post is long enough – it brings us up to the present and hopefully means that I will be a little less shy about putting up posts over the next few weeks.

Cheers,


Ali