Cartoonist shares his personal stroke story

Chance are, you have a stroke story, or you know someone who has a stroke story. Every year, thousands of new stroke stories are generated.

The second part of today's news is that the cartoon "Nancy" is still published. I subscribe to two newspapers (yes, actual paper newspapers) and neither publishes "Nancy," which I remember from my youth.

So I almost missed the story of the current "Nancy" cartoonist, who uses his personal story to highlight stroke awareness:

[Guy] Gilchrist credits the minor event in his youth for motivating him to give up his unhealthy, stress-filled “rock-n-roll lifestyle” and go all-in on his craft. A second medical event – perhaps another minor stroke – in his 40s served as a powerful reminder, snapping him back into a healthy lifestyle that he now maintains at age 59.

Finding time to tune in to nature

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.

-George Washington Carver

It's my favorite time of the year - fall.

Temperatures are cooler but not cold, ideal for being outdoors. The leaves turn and crunch underfoot. The sky turns an amazing blue.

I'm fortunate to live near a trail, lined with trees with frequent sightings of deer, rabbits, squirrels and birds. This time of year, it's often dark when I start running on the trail, and not long ago, I could hear an owl nearby along the route.

Then I stumbled across the quote from George Washington Carver about nature, God's unlimited broadcasting station.

Be sure to tune in.

Inhaling secondhand smoke? It's linked to higher risk of stroke

Here's yet another reason to stop smoking (or better yet, never start). Researchers found that secondhand smoke is linked to higher risk of stroke:

Researchers found that never-smokers who had a stroke were nearly 50 percent more likely to be exposed to secondhand smoke at home than people who had never had a stroke.

During the study, stroke survivors exposed to secondhand smoke were also more likely to die from any cause compared to those without secondhand smoke exposure.

What's your mantra?

If you've been here before, you might well know that I'm a distance runner. Not a fast one, but a runner just the same.

Before another dark winter sets in, I got a Road ID bracelet with my name plus phone numbers in case of emergency.

I added one more line: my running mantra. When I get tired or get in a bad mental state, I repeat to myself: "Relax. Power. Glide. God."

This is mostly stolen from Olympic runner Jeff Galloway. I'm a big fan, and his mantra is "Relax. Power. Glide."

Courage. Sympathy. Love.

A little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.

-C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis

Courage. Sympathy, Love.

I ran across this C.S. Lewis quote not long ago and it started me thinking.

In a way, the first phrase reminds me of the Malcolm Gladwell book "Blink," which I recommend. There's such a thing as too much information in decision-making.

The second phrase is like the Cowardly Lion in the "Wizard of Oz." What made him move was his sympathy with other characters, not, as he says he lacks, courage.

And that "tincture" of the love of God? The good news is that this tincture - and so much more - is given to everyone.

Type of stroke location might be relevant to new treatment

Last week, we had a post about new stroke treatment. Not long afterward, I ran across another story about how - potentially - to decide on treatment. I might have to do with large-vessel strokes related to blood clots:

“There was some benefit of therapy up to 7 1/3 hours after onset — that’s an important new aspect,” Jeffrey L. Saver, MD, of David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said in a press release. “If you get the artery open at 3 hours, 65% of patients will be able to live independently 3 months later. If it takes 8 hours to get it open, then only 45% will be able to live independently. It makes a major difference in outcome.”

Speed and the right place - more important than ever

Sooner the treatment, better the outcome.

You've read this before here - time is critical in getting a stroke patient to a stroke center hospital. Every minute counts.

You've also read about recent research on new stroke treatment. Now, read about how the new treatment calls for getting to the right place quickly:

That’s the implication of a study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that the sooner patients with severe strokes receive a thrombectomy, the less disabled they tend to be three months later.

'Heals the sorrows of their hearts'

He binds their wounds, heals the sorrows of their hearts.

-Psalm 147:3

What do these words mean to you?

To me, they are about not the physical suffering we face in this world, but the spiritual suffering that impacts us all, sooner or later.

We'll all leave this physical world, but we all have the opportunity for ultimate healing of our spiritual suffering.

Not temporarily but eternally.

Adding choices for possible stroke treatments

Last post, I included a link to my own story about the clot-busting drug tissue plasminogen activator, better known as tPA.

Keep in mind, though, that my story is 18 years old. And still, tPA is the only approved drug to treat clot-caused strokes. I ran across an interesting story about the reason why the drug doesn't work every time, and what seems to be coming next:

Twenty years ago stroke doctors celebrated the arrival of a powerful new weapon: the clot-clearing drug tPA. It was hailed as a lifesaver and has proved to be one for hundreds of thousands of patients since. TPA was the first and is still the only medicine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating strokes caused by clots that block blood flow to the brain. But like so many medical marvels, tPA (which stands for tissue plasminogen activator) has turned out to have serious limitations.

What are your odds of the right stroke treatment?

You can read my story here and an update here. But in a nutshell, I wound up in the right place and the right time when my stroke occurred back in 1998, two years after tissue plasminogen activator was approved for stroke patients - a Southern community hospital, of all places.

More than 18 years later, we still have problems getting this medication to stroke patients. Kaiser Health News noted geographic and racial disparities in stroke treatment tracked in a new study:

The findings come from a report published Wednesday in the journal Neurology. Researchers found stroke patients living in the Northeast states had more than twice the odds of receiving tPA — a powerful anti-coagulant that can break up the clot causing the stroke — than those living in the Midwest and the South.