Stroke Awareness Week: Don't miss the 'red alert' being signalled by your body

A mini-stroke, or what doctors call a transient ischemic attack (TIA) is a warning from your body telling you there is a very high risk that you will have another stroke soon afterwards, writes Áilín Quinlan

Jim Hastings aged 88 at home on the Douglas Road in Cork City. ‘They said that they had to clear this blockage. The doctor said that they could give me medication or that I could have an operation. They explained it was quite a serious operation and I was given time to think about it’. Picture: Eddie O’Hare

One night when consultant neurologist, Simon Cronin, was on call at Cork University Hospital, he was summoned to see a farmer who had just arrived at the Emergency Department with a very serious stroke.

The 62-year-old’s plight, recalls Dr Cronin, was not an uncommon one: “The week before, this man had been eating dinner when his right arm became floppy and he found he couldn’t lift it.”