May is Stroke Awareness Month.
Pamela Hampton and Charlotte Colbert
Charlotte Colbert is a stroke educator at INTEGRIS Southwest Medical Center. She has devoted her professional life to promoting stroke awareness, until one day -
it became personal.
With her sister’s blessing, she shares her family’s experience below…
“It all started in January 2020. For some odd reason my sister, Pamela Hampton, was being admitted to the hospital every ninety days for septic shock pneumonia. Every NINETY days she was being admitted to the INTEGRIS Health Edmond ICU. It was somewhere between her fifth and sixth hospital admission that she had a stroke. She had been home from the hospital about 36 hours when at 6 p.m. in the evening she complained to her husband that her right arm was numb and tingly. No one in the family knew about the early warning signs of stroke, so my sister went to bed. The next morning her right arm was purple, flaccid and she could not speak clearly. The family rushed her to INTEGRIS Health Edmond. A telestroke conference and diagnostics identified an ischemic stroke with a very large blood clot in her left carotid artery. Thanks to Joshua Kershen, M.D., a neurologist at INTEGRIS Southwest Medical Center, she was urgently transferred to INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center where a successful thrombectomy was performed. The following Monday at 4 p.m. she discharged from the hospital. That was a little over two years ago. She returned to her normal life. The only post stroke symptom that I occasionally identify with my sister is she will struggle for a specific ‘word’.
I was so impressed with the care my sister received that when a stroke educator position opened up at INTEGRIS Health I had to apply – and now I work for the same organization that saved my sister’s life.”
Colbert is sharing this story during national Stroke Awareness Month, to remind people to use the acronym BE FAST for recognizing a stroke:
B - Balance: Watch for sudden loss of balance
E - Eyes: Check for vision loss
F - Face: Look for an uneven smile
A - Arm: Check if one arm is weak
S - Speech: Listen for slurred speech
T - Time: Call 9-1-1 right away
Most strokes are preventable and a large percentage of them are treatable if you get the right care, right away.
