F.A.S.T.

In case you didn't know what a stroke looks like:

Face: asymmetrical, have them smile

Arms: one weaker than the other

Speech: slurred or unable to speak

Time: time is brain, the longer you wait, the more permanent the damage.

time is brain

This gave me a stroke
- It's actually a quite common saying; because the most important factor is minimizing time to treatment. Every second a part of the brain dies. After a few minutes there will be significant permanent brain loss. (according to some sources on average around 2 Million brain cells per minute)
  
  Thats also why STEMO exist. They're special ambulances with a CT and teleradiologocal appliances (meaning the supporting radiologist is not necessarily onboard but joins remote) and medication and specialized stroke-medics. Because a regular ambulance will cost the patient too much time - and to much (living) brain matter
Have them smile is very key for the face one. Faces aren't perfectly symmetric. People often use the phrase facial droop which is a somewhat misleading phrase. Older individuals with looser skin and wrinkles there may be a "droop" but not otherwise. It's really the lack of activation of the lower facial muscles on one side that helps you tell. Facial muscles help move the side of your mouth both up and down, and they both get weak in a stroke affecting the face. So unless someone has a lot of loose skin it'll probably just look kind of flat. So again, have them smile, the inability to elevate the corner of the mouth or decreased ability to do so is key.

There's also a lot of misleading graphics out there with upper facial weakness too, like inability to close the eye. That can happen with certain strokes, but it's much more common for only the lower face muscles to be weak, with the eye and forehead muscles being fine.

Here's a good example of what it'll usually look like irl:

This is someone trying to smile, the side affected by the stroke would be the person's right side (left side of the picture), not the side that's "drooping" that's actually the normal side.
I had a pharmacist that also include BE as well. Balance problems and Eye changes.

Okay I'll go to the hospital but what should I do with the stroke victim?

Pray for them.

Then grab me a mcrib on the way home, plz.
- You just leaked the GOPs 2024 political platform with that statement.

I know this is a meme, but that acronym is very important. I also learned from a pharmacist another version: BE FAST

Balance

Eye changes

Face droop

Arm drift

Speech change

Time

Dude was having a stroke trying to spell hospital.

It's spelled hosprintal

I had a stroke in my sleep. My dumbass had to be convinced to go the next day.

Well, to be fair, your brain was probably damaged.
- I know you're half joking, but it definitely is to some degree. I can feel some things are different. It aged me a few decades overnight for sure.
It's not uncommon. Especially strokes affecting the non dominant side of the brain, people often don't realize there's anything wrong. Takes other people around you to tell to you that something is wrong.

You shouldn't feel bad, it could happen to anyone. Just depends on where the stroke is in the brain if someone is capable of recognizing it themselves or not.

An especially difficult one for people to detect on their own is strokes that are affecting visual centers of the brain. People expect they'll see black or something. But you don't see anything at all, field of vision is just narrower. It's like, you don't see black out the back of your head normally right? Usually if people notice anything it's that they're bumping or tripping into stuff on one side, or like driving and get in a car accident because they're not perceiving one half of what's in front of them.
- I woke up blind in one eye. It was obvious something was wrong. I'm just stubborn. You're right about vision being narrower. It was fascinating looking at my blind eye in the mirror.
  
  My vision was randomly going cross-eyed for two weeks before it happened. Also small circular headache in the back corner of my head.
  
  If anyone has those symptoms in the future, get to the hostptintal like the meme says.