Farm kids, young and old, use duct tape for everything — patching, fixing, and even bandaging. Shannon Huettl, a stroke coordinator at the ThedaCare Appleton location and a nurse on the stroke floor in Neenah, has experience with farmer patients having patched large cuts with duct tape.
But you can’t use duct tape to fix a stroke.
“Farmers tend to focus more on their farms and less on themselves, and so high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes — just the lifestyles that they lead tend to increase the risk factors for stroke,” Huettl says.
This season, be aware of the signs of stroke so that you can seek help before it’s too late. Huettl has advice for farmers to both prevent and respond to symptoms of a stroke. It starts with the acronym BE FAST: Balance, Eyes, Face, Arms, Speech, and a Terrible headache.
“We can do a lot for strokes these days when we can catch it immediately,” she says. “We’ve got a short window — four hours — that we can give medication that can clear up a stroke, but it’s such a short window from when those symptoms start.”
Identifying symptoms early and going to the hospital can save brain cells, she says. Up to 24 hours, medics can perform surgical procedures to help.
She says the good news for Central Wisconsin is that there’s going to be more access to clinics as more come online in the next year.
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