Call. Do not drive yourself to see if it passes.
Some changes belong to a slow year. Some do not. The National Institute on Aging is plain about stroke: call 911. Do not drive yourself. Do not ask someone else to drive you if an ambulance can come. Treatment starts on the way, and waiting is how a recoverable hour gets spent.
Call now
- Sudden numbness or weakness in the face, arm, or leg, especially on one side.
- Sudden confusion, or trouble speaking or understanding.
- Sudden trouble seeing, in one eye or both.
- Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, or a loss of balance.
- A sudden severe headache with no cause you know.
Chest pressure, trouble breathing, a cold sweat, or pain that moves into the arm, the neck, or the jaw is the same kind of call. Older adults do not always get a dramatic scene. “I do not feel right,” plus any of those, is enough. The heart page is linked below. This paper is not standing in your kitchen.
A slow change still deserves a person
Weight you did not mean to lose, a new fall, or confusion that is not your usual afternoon are reasons to call the clinician this week. They are not reasons to decide it is age. The man in the photograph has a hand on his forehead and a screen in the other. He is not a diagnosis. If that feeling were sudden, the screen would not be the next step. The phone would.
Sources to read yourself
- National Institute on Aging, Stroke: signs, causes, and treatment
- National Institute on Aging, Heart health and aging
A note from the desk
This is general reading, not a diagnosis and not a plan written for you. Before you change how you move, eat, or what you keep in the cabinet, ask your own clinician. Do not stop a prescribed medicine because of something you read.