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Interview Transcribed

John:

It’s time for a podcast from John, Anna, and Friends on this Thursday morning, October 29th. Our friends, guests from the community today come in from LifeNet. We’ve got Tina Bell and Jarrod Nall. Tina has been in here before. She’s one of our favorites. That’s right. Jarrod’s in here for the first time, but it’s all great. They’re here to talk about among other things, the fact that it is World Stroke Day, and we want to talk about how maybe you can prevent this from happening in the first place and then what to do if it actually does occur and some other things about LifeNet. A stroke is a huge, huge problem, especially in, well, let’s be honest, this part of the country it’s high, right? Let’s start with the definition of a stroke.

Jarrod:

There are two types of strokes There is a stroke that results from a clot in your brain. And there’s also one that results from a ruptured blood vessel. The clot type stroke, or an ischemic stroke as it’s known, is about 85% of them. And the bleed … a lot of people know those as aneurysms, would be the other 15%. So that’s the definition of a stroke. The definition is you have a disruption in blood flow to your brain. So parts of your brain start to literally die because they have a lack of blood flow and oxygen.

John:

What causes the two different kinds? The one with the aneurysm or the clot, are they caused by different things?

Jarrod:

Well, yes. So you have a lot of risk factors that contribute to the clot type stroke. There’s our diet in this part of the country. We love our biscuits and bacon and gravy.

John:

Unfortunately that leads sometimes to a stroke, right?

Jarrod:

Absolutely. If you go to the cdc.gov website and just do a search for stroke facts, you’ll find there’s a map there that highlights in color, the hot areas. Unfortunately, right where we live is a hotbed of the country. I’m sure it’s a surprise to everyone. Your eggs and bacon grease and lack of exercise and smoking. There are a number of risk factors that contribute.

Anna:

All right. So, are there ways to possibly prevent it? I know that sometimes things just happen more with families than others, and it’s kind of a, almost a genetic thing with cancer and, and things like this can happen that way. You can still fight it as much as you can, but the sometimes genes don’t work with you very well, right? But for most everybody, if you’ll do these things that you’re talking about, it lower your risk of having it in the first place. Correct?

Jarrod:

Absolutely. So, if you have high blood pressure, you need to seek a physician’s advice, take your medication, keep your blood pressure under control. For all that are overweight, like myself, we need to do better about exercising and, you know, working on our diet, eat more healthy. If you’re a smoker, you need to quit, please quit. You know, those are the main ones that we have control over anyways.

Speaker 1 (04:18):

All right. Uh, we’re gonna hang around. And when we come back on the next break, we want to talk a little bit about what Anna mentioned on Facebook. If something started happening to me, I won’t enter the, know what the signs are so that she can call someone immediately or running around the building and talk about the time factor, because the time factor is huge when it comes to things like stroke, heart attack, things like that, obviously time is of the essence. There are other things that may not be quite, uh, uh, is important, but this is huge, especially with stroke. And even, even I being a novice, I’ve heard that. So, uh, we’ll talk more about that coming up on the ping on a Thursday morning, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the best of most countries right here, one, two, three, nine, nine, eight, five, mild pink radio.com.

John:

Let’s talk a little bit about what are some of the classic signs that somebody may be in the middle of having a stroke?

Jarrod:

Sure, well, so there’s an acronym that we use to teach the general public, and we use it ourselves to keep it all straight. It’s BE FAST. It coordinates with all the symptoms that we’re looking for. So the B is balance. If you start having difficulty walking or you feel dizzy. E is for eyes. So if you start having vision trouble with one or both of your eyes. F is for your face. So if the patient, or if your loved one starts to have a decrease in muscle tone on one side of their face or the other, they’ll have kind of a crooked smile. The A is for arm. It’s really about having weakness on one side or the other, and that may affect their leg as well.  The S is for speech. That can be slurred speech, or it can be you’re using the wrong words to describe something. And then the T is time. The critical factor with strokes is every minute you lose up to 2 million neurons in your brain, 2 million. And, you know, from one minute to the next, what that really means is, you may not be able to feed yourself, or you may not be able to bathe yourself moving forward. So every minute is critical.

Anna:

Cool. So obviously the quicker you get to the care, he more things that you’ll be able to save, and the more things you’ll probably be able to do once you go through the therapy and all that. You have to cut down on the bad stuff, helping out the good stuff by making it a timely quick. And that’s why you need to call 9-1-1 and get an ambulance.

Jarrod:

Absolutely. You need to call 9-1-1, as opposed to driving to the hospital, because we can alert them ahead of time. We can draw blood and start an IV. We can get an assessment done, and it cuts a lot of time off of things that would have to be done after you got to the hospital. We can get those done on the way so they can be prepared to receive you, and we can get you straight to the CT scanner, figure out what kind of stroke it is, and begin treatment immediately.

John:

If you have a certain kind of stroke, you can get that medicine and that medicine that they can give you can be a huge game changer on, like you say, the functions that you get to keep with you when you go forward.

Jarrod:

Absolutely. There’s a drug that dissolves blood clots. And there are people who have had strokes who returned completely to normal. So it’s an amazing drug. But it’s all about time. There’s a window. And if we can’t get to you within that window, then you may not qualify for the drug. So it’s all about time,

John:

In the United States, about every four minutes, somebody across the United States has a stroke. That’s so tragic.

Anna:

If you stop and think about that, that’s kind of breathtaking. One every four minutes in the United States. Wow. Several have died this morning since we’ve been talking. That shows that it’s very important trying to cut down those risk factors. And then, like you say, the time management. If you have one, the quicker you get there, the more likely it is they can treat you and save you and give you more function back when it happens. And I love the stories that you tell about the people that now you can’t even really tell even had a stroke because they got treatment fast. And that’s what I want to talk about. Getting treatment fast means don’t mess with it yourself. Call 9-1-1. Get LifeNet on the way so they can do this. And you’ve got a great membership plan. I love this every time you talk about it, but talk about how people can, can get signed up. So if something happens, you know, if, if you have a situation and you call 9-1-1 and LifeNet comes, you’re kind of covered. So talk about that.

Tina:

Yeah. So a lot of people are confused, or don’t understand that EMS service is not free in the community. We are a nonprofit agency, but we do depend on people paying for their transports to keep the doors open. And so with that said, we don’t want people to be surprised by an ambulance bill. Nobody expects to have to pay an ambulance bill to have to go to the ER. And so we have what’s called a LifeNet membership and people can become a LifeNet member on our website, or they can call us 903-832-8531. We’ll talk to them more about it. But basically what it is is four $75 a year or $7 a month, you can get a ground membership. If you’re ever transported by one of our ground ambulances and your insurance pays a portion of the bill, we accept that payment as payment in full. If you don’t have insurance, or believe it or not a large portion (about 25% of the time, insurance may deny your claim), and then you’re responsible for 100% of that bill, we will discount that by 40%.

Anna:
That’s a big savings.

Tina:

Yeah. So for $7 a month, that covers everybody in your household. And you know, the holidays are coming up, you got grandkids coming in or…

John:

Uncle Joe and whoever…

Tina:

If they’re at your house nd something happens to them, if you call 9-1-1 and we transport them from your house, they’re also covered on your membership. So it’s pretty comprehensive. Again, it’s not a huge investment. Your donation helps support us in the community and what we do, and at the same time, it gives you that financial peace of mind.

Anna:

So $75 a year?

Tina:

$75 a year for ground. If you want our air coverage, in case you’re ever transported on our helicopter or fixed wing, that goes up to $135 a year for ground and air.

Anna:

Well, that’s nothing, and you can either pay it all at once or out monthly. Right?

Tina:

Correct.

John:

So we are with Tina and Jarrod from LifeNet talking about World Stroke Day. Anna has an important question about strokes.

Anna:

It can happen to anyone at any age, is this correct?

Jarrod:

That’s correct. A lot of people often think that maybe an older person was going to get, it can be any age.

Tina:

You know, we were sharing a story during the break about a guy who was in his late 30s, getting ready to run a marathon. He’d been training for it. He was eating breakfast that morning before the marathon and started suffering a stroke in the restaurant, but he got to the hospital in time. He was young and healthy, and he didn’t fit necessarily the bill of what you would think. So it can happen to anyone. Don’t ignore those signs. BE FAST … balance, eyes, face, arms, speech, and time. If you notice any of those, call 9-1-1 immediately.

Anna:

It’s better to err on the side of caution, then it is to be too late.

Jarrod:

Absolutely. You’ve got some people that are in tip top shape, right? Some of those people that you see jogging down the street every day, but they may have a heart attack or a stroke. Sometimes it’s genetic. They can be in the best shape ever eat the best foods ever, and still, it can happen to them.

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