Almost seven years after suffering a stroke, Pat Ozella still has difficulty speaking. But that didn't keep her from telling her story to a roughly 40-member audience at the RiverPlex on Friday morning. Ozella, 62, of Washington, demonstrated the symptoms of a typical stroke at a "Stroke Fair" sponsored by OSF Saint Francis Medical Center. The reenactment was part of a strategy to educate the public on the symptoms of strokes and the ways the "brain attacks" can be prevented. Ozella acted as though she suddenly didn't feel well, and she showed her husband and a pair of medics she couldn't move her right arm. For Ozella's husband, Tony, the demonstration was a reminder of a morning in October 2001, when his wife suddenly fell over as she walked across the room with a cup of coffee. "It was just - bang!" he said. "There was no warning." And like many Americans, he was mostly unfamiliar with the signs a person had been afflicted by a clotted or ruptured blood vessel in the brain. He immediately called 911 because of the severity of his wife's reaction, but Tony Ozella said he wants to make sure others are more able to recognize when a friend of loved one has suffered a stroke. It is critical strokes are recognized early, because more damage is done to the brain when they are left untreated, said Deepak Nair, a resident physician in training at St. Francis. "Time is brain," Nair said several times during a presentation to the group. ...
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