Stroke. More than 500,000 Americans will suffer its silent attack this year. The number has epidemic proportions, but add to it the newly estimated 11 million victims each year whose strokes go undetected and America shakes its collective head and wonders, am I next? One third of those detected will die in a short period of time, over 160,000 fatalities, making stroke the number three killer in the US behind only heart disease and cancer. It leaves another 200,000 victims with permanent disability.
In spite of the numbers, brain attack strikes intimately and personally. Its shadow of death spreads quickly over living tissue in the brain, violating personality and disrupting life. This graphic contrast, huge numbers of victims versus the unique intimacy of each stroke, draws into focus the one common by-product of all attacks, fear - fear of the unknown, fear of death or livelihood lost.
The perception is evil incarnate, destroying the sanctity of one's life and home. I know, stroke left me blinded, with short-term memory wiped clean and sensory input distorted and disorienting. Only the divine touch could bring the light of hope into this darkness.
The good news - much can be done to fan this hope into a fire of restoration. The better news - remarkable advancements available today include "miracle" clot busters, surgical procedures that listen to the differences in sounds made by healthy cells and dead ones, probes that travel through the body to apply medicines directly on affected areas of the brain,, and the vision for tomorrow that moves microscopic nanotechnology out of science fiction directly into the brain to both repair and replace damaged brain cells.
Different Strokes... unwraps the fear of stroke, revealing possibilities for healing and hope - hope birthed by the insight of experience and supported by research collected from leading edge resources.
