A Canadian woman's stroke selfie video helped doctors diagnose her after previously brushing off her symptoms as stress.
Stacey Yepes' ordeal began back in April when she visited an emergency room after experiencing numbness in her face and slurred speech — what she thought were indications of a mini-stroke. But after tests came back negative, doctors chalked up her
symptoms to stress and sent her home, CBC News reported.
"It's true that I hadn't slept well the last few days and that I have a stressful job," Yepes, a legal secretary,
told the University Health Network Toronto in a statement. "But I was pretty sure that the symptoms I had experienced were due to a stroke."
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So, when the numbness came back a couple days later while she was driving, Yepes decided to film herself in a selfie-like video, which UHN then uploaded to YouTube earlier this month.
In the clip, Yepes calmly describes what's happening to her body.
"The sensation is happening again," she says. "It's all tingling on left side . . . I don't know why this is happening to me."
Later in the video, Yepes has difficulty lifting her hand and decides to drive herself to Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. She was later treated at the Toronto Western Hospital stroke center.
"I think it was just to show somebody, because I knew it was not stress-related," Yepes later told CBC News of the video. "And I thought if I could show somebody what was happening, they would have a better understanding."
Dr. Cheryl Jaigobin said Yepes' presence of mind to record the symptoms proved invaluable to the doctors treating her.
"In all my years treating stroke patients, we've never seen anyone tape themselves before," Jaigobin, the stroke neurologist at the hospital's Krembil Neuroscience Center, told CBC News. "Her symptoms were compelling, and the fact she stopped and found a way to portray them in such a visual fashion, we were all touched by it."
The American Stroke Association's website suggests that a person should call 911 if he or she feels their face drooping or if one side goes numb, if they experience arm weakness, or if they have difficulty speaking. The website said even if the symptoms go away, like in Yepes' case, the person should still pursue medical treatment.
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