Life can change in an instant, as 40-year-old Chad Thompson found out on April 23, 2022.
Then just 39, the active husband and father of two boys had just finished trimming apple trees on his brother’s property in Paris, Michigan, when he began to feel strange on the road back to the house.
In March 2015, I was at home with my father. Nothing was out of the ordinary when he started showing signs of a stroke.
At the time, I didn’t know what was going on, so I called for an ambulance. The paramedics came to the house and confirmed my dad was having a stroke. His speech was slurred.
Strokes can materialize in unexpected ways. Such was the case for Phillip Hamilton, a professor of history at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va., whose stroke possibly resulted from a neck injury that he doesn’t remember sustaining.
If you want to know what a stroke looks like, ask Belendia Williams. She saw one up close and personal when she found her 35-year-old sister Leah Speights undressed and unresponsive on her bed.
Get Ahead of Stroke® is a national public education and advocacy campaign designed to improve systems of care for stroke patients. Founded in 2016 by the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery (SNIS), today the campaign is supported by a coalition of organizations with the goal of securing the best possible outcomes for stroke patients by driving policy change and public awareness nationwide.
