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The signs and symptoms of a TIA are, again, they’re identical to a stroke. And that includes vision loss and there’s a type of vision loss that with Tia is very common. It’s called amaurosis fugax. And that’s where a clot goes up the carotid artery and comes up and off of the carotid artery comes the artery to the eyeball. The central retinal artery, that clock comes up and blocks the artery to the eyeball. What’ll happen is you lose vision in one eye. It’s interesting the way that the arteries go to the eye. They sort of like this, there’s one up and one down. And so when there’s a blockage that happens, the blockage hits and the blood will stop flowing on the top or the bottom. And what you’ll get is you’ll get this painless vision loss, like a curtain coming down or a curtain coming up can last a couple of seconds, can last a couple minutes and goes away. And that’s something to pay very careful attention with. The other big symptoms of stroke or TIA, and again, I use the term interchangeably often because they’re the same thing at least at first. You can’t tell the difference between a TIA and a stroke when they’re happening. Will be weakness of the face. It will be half the face and it will be the lower half of the face. Weakness of the arm, weakness of the leg, inability to speak right, or inability to balance or walk. Any of those things happen, that should be a trip to the hospital even if they go away. And time is really critical here again, because within the first couple, even though that that risk for stroke less for three months, the risk is highest in those first few days after the TIA.
