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>> Tonight.
>> I was in the middle of a workout and all of a sudden I just got a piercing headache
as if someone was taking a knife and repeatedly stabbed me in the head.
>> An ABC 27 special presentation.
>> When we asked him to smile, it was just a lopsided smile. We knew he was most likely
having a stroke.
>> I didn't believe until I saw him there at the hospital laying there not be able to
move and barely being able to speak.
>> Penn State Hershey Stroke Center presents Stroke Smart, brought to you by Penn State
Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.
>> Good evening, I am Chuck Rhodes. Stroke is the fourth leading cause of death in the
United States. Each year about 795,000 people suffer a stroke and over 140,000 people die
each year from a stroke. Now, 75 percent of all strokes occur in people over the age of
65, however, as you will see tonight, younger people can and do have strokes. Tonight's
specialists from Penn State Hershey Stroke Center are in the ABC 27 call center to answer
your questions. Now, just call the number on the bottom of the screen or you can email
your questions during the show to questions at abc27.com. Dr. Akshal Patel will answer
your emails throughout tonight's show. All calls, as always, will remain confidential,
same for the emails. And we begin tonight with Debra Pinkerton sharing one of those
patient's story. Debra?
>> Thanks Chuck. A college student had high hopes for his four years at Gettysburg College,
it turns out he achieved much more than he ever expected. Cory Weissman has dribbled
a basketball for as long as he can remember.
>> Basketball has always been my life. There is some sort of satisfaction that I got, just
having the ball in my hands.
>> Just from an infant or soon thereafter, he just always had to have a ball in his hand.
>> I was looking back at pictures, still pictures that there's a basketball in every picture
and that I did not put there.
>> At Jackson Memorial High School in New Jersey, Cory made an amazing record. He scored
more than a thousand points.
>> Scoring a thousand points is just an incredible achievement for me, all the hours and hard
work that I have put in is just a symbol of you know all my hard work paying off.
>> Gettysburg College knew Cory was a gifted player and one that came to shoot baskets
for the Bullets.
>> We need kids who can dribble, pass, and shoot and he has the ability to do those things
plus score.
>> Cory played in three games his freshman year. After the season was over, Cory continued
to train. Four years ago, he was lifting weights with his buddy Brandon.
>> I was in the middle of a set and you know, workout, and all of a sudden I just got a
piercing headache. He saw that I didn't look so good and I was starting to get dizzy and
I guess my face was a little bit pale and he said, you know, why don't we just go outside,
let's just go to the hallway, get some water and see if you feel a little bit better.
>> Brandon took Cory to the athletic training room to get help.
>> I remember halfway there I started to stumble and my left leg started to drag on the floor.
>> As he came in, I went to put my hand behind his back to help walk him in and he almost
went limp and needed assistance. I asked Cory to--I was on his left side, I asked him to
squeeze my hand and he was unable to squeeze my hand with his left hand, but reached across
with his right to try to squeeze my hand with his right hand. And that's when we asked him
to smile and when he did smile, it was just a lopsided smile where only the right side
went up and that's when we knew he was most likely having a stroke.
>> Cory's parents quickly found out the news.
>> A nurse takes the phone and says Mrs. Weissman, this is the nurse, your son is in very serious
condition. I don't know if they said critical, I don't remember the words. He had a subarachnoid
hemorrhage. He had a bleed in his brain and he is really, really sick.
>> Tina, my wife called me. I was working, got an hour away from home and she was close
to hysterics and said something happened to Cory, told me in brief what she knew that
he apparently had a stroke and it seems so unreal, you know, I really couldn't even digest
it.
>> They packed their bags and made the three hour trip from New Jersey to Penn State Hershey
Stroke Center.
>> The weather was awful. I was very determined to get there as quickly as we could to see
>> Let me get there to see him alive; it's all I could think about. Let me just get there
to see him alive.
>> When he came into the hospital, he was awake and alert, but it was clear that he
had had a stroke. He was very weak on his left side, his face was weak and his left
arm and left leg were weak.
>> And when we got to the hospital and coach Madison would see us in the parking lot and
walk with us upstairs to this room of I didn't know what to expect.
>> This was a kid that was always so healthy and vibrant. I didn't believe until I saw
him there at the hospital in the Critical Care Unit laying there not being able to move
and barely being able to speak. And then it hits you, you know.
>> Doctors explained Cory's condition.
>> The scan showed that he had bleeding into his brain and the bleeding was located in
the frontal lobe on the right side. What causes bleeding was it turned out to be a blood vessel
malformation, an artero-venous malformation or AVM and this is an abnormal tangled blood
vessels where the arteries are directly feeding into the veins and creates an tangle of vessels
like this. And it looks like a can of worms or bowl of spaghetti and this creates weak
points in the vessels which can lead to bleeding coming to a stroke that Cory had.
>> He showed us the angiogram on the screen, completely showed us where--photos of Cory's
brain showed us the bleeding.
>> Dr. Cockroft explained the procedure to initially treat the AVM.
>> The procedure that I personally did was called embolization of his AVM and what that
involved is taking a very small catheter about the size of a thin piece of spaghetti and
putting it directly into one of these arteries that's feeding that tangle and injecting through
that a liquid glue-like substance which then causes these vessels to seal up or plug up.
>> It worked. After about five days, doctors knew Cory will get better, so did his parents.
>> I'll never forget, I don't know what day it was, but I will never forget the day that
he made a joke and it was like so reassuring. It was like, my son is alive, he is like there.
>> Cory spent 12 days at the Med Center and was more than ready to go to a rehab center
in New Jersey.
>> My goal from the time that I was fully awake in the hospital was to play basketball
again, to get back out on to the court. That was my motivation and that's what drove me
to work hard.
>> When he left Hershey, he could barely sit up by himself; that's how weak he was. They
had him up the next day walking; that is being held up on parallel bars.
>> Very quickly he started to show me, look ma, I can do this, now I can do this. I can
move my elbows like very small increments, but each day or every other day, he showed
me something else he was able to do.
>> I was wheeled in there on a stretcher and I couldn't move anything on the left side
of my body and by the time I left a month later, I was walking with a cane with a very
severe limp, and so, a lot of motor deficits but I walked out of there, which a goal in
mind.
>> Cory was moving in the right direction. Now doctors needed to take care of the problem
that caused the stroke. We'll show you the rest of Cory's story in a few minutes. Chuck,
back to you.
>> That's a remarkable story, a young man. Now joining us in the studio is Dr. Ray Reichwein,
the co-director of the Stroke Center in Hershey. Doctor, when I hear the age 19, that just
jumps off the page at you, is it really unusual to have a stroke at that age? I mean, it just
seems so out of whack.
>> Now, individuals can have a stroke at any age and we're starting to see more and more
young strokes, some of the same common risk factors that older individuals have, some
unusual ones, younger individuals can have congenital heart disease, with trauma tear
blood vessels, some have clotting disorders as a more common.
>> What are the most common strokes and we talk about that and that was one catch phrase.
What are some of the most common strokes?
>> The most common kind of stroke is called an ischemic stroke and that is where a clot
or a piece of plaque material blocks up the blood vessel and the blood flow to that brain
area is cut off and that tissue dies over a period of time. That accounts for about
85 percent of all strokes. The remaining 15 are brain hemorrhages as in Cory's case and
commonly due to either aneurysms or vascular malformations. In an older person, one of
the more common causes is just poorly controlled high blood pressures.
>> Is there such a thing as someone is more risk for a stroke than others?
>> Correct. There are many common risk factors that many of us have out there in society
and those include high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, excessive alcohol use, obstructive
sleep apnea, and the list goes on and on. One of the other more common ones to mention
are blockages in an either the neck or the brain arteries particularly the carotid arteries
in your neck. And then lastly, cardiac causes and an irregular often silent heart rhythm
with advanced age called atrial fibrillation is one of the most common causes in individual
in their 70's and 80's.
>>Let's talk about the time factor for treatment of strokes, how important is that from the
time of the stroke until they get treatment?
>> It is critical and the motto in the stroke world is time is brain and for every 15 to
30 minutes of brain injury, you can lose millions of cells and millions of cells will quantify
into disability to some degree and the longer, the more severe, the more disabled. With that
being said, our best treatment for clot-based strokes or ischemic strokes is, it's the only
FDA approved treatment is an intravenous clot buster called TPA and that has to be administered
within three to four and a half hours from the onset of your symptoms, so it becomes
very critical.
>> Talk about the symptoms.
>> Yeah.
>> What about the symptoms?
>> The symptoms is still many people aren't aware of and only about a third or more people
still know the common ones and the main ones are two things, they're sudden onset and you
lose something depending on the brain area affected. Commonly speech or languages one,
and the other one is loss of motor function commonly either a face, arm or leg droop.
And the acronym out there is something called FAST, F-A-S-T. So, if there is a facial droop,
arm weakness, there is something wrong with your speech, T becomes very important, time
and calling 911, getting promptly taken to stroke centers.
>> You touched on it briefly new treatments for strokes. In the ten years you've had the
center there, talk about that.
>> So, things have evolved over time and we are now evolving into different new clot busters.
We now have new catheter based devices to wear as you will see later. We can pass a
catheter up into the brain artery that's blocked and with special devices take the clot or
debris out. Brain cooling has become more common as currently still being--
>> Brain cooling?
>> Brain cooling, so cooling down the body or the brain to try and protect cells while
we reestablish blood flow and lastly, we've just began doing research into intravenous
stem cell infusions that are begun within a few days of the stroke to hopefully enhance
recovery.
>> A lot of new things on the horizon.
>> Correct.
>> Thank you for joining us tonight doctor.
>> Thank you.
>> We're going to check back with Debra Pinkerton in the ABC 27 call center. Debra, it's busy
over there.
>> Chuck, it's very busy. The phone lines are ringing so the number to call once again
is 717-346-3333. Here to answer our viewer questions this evening is the stroke manager
there at the Med Center, Kathy Morrison, thanks for being with us.
>> Thank you.
>> This is the first viewer question: My dad had a stroke in his early 60's and my mom
developed dementia is her 60's. I'm a 40-year-old overweight female and I had been switching
my words round a lot when I speak, am I at risk of having the stroke because of my family
history?
>> Not necessarily. Family history certainly is a red flag. Other things can cause your
problems, fatigue, stress, anxiety, but with that red flag history, if you haven't talked
to your family doctor for a while and haven't had a good physical; that's the next thing
you should do.
>> Okay, thanks so much and we'll talk to you a little bit better. Once again the phone
lines are busy. If you can't get through on the phone lines, you can email your question
to questions at abc27.com. Stay with us, we will be right back.
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