Lifetime risk of stroke? One in six!

Buondì.

Next week we’ll be having our Autumn/Fall sale, which means a coupon code that saves you 20% on online lessons and/or ebooks for improving your Italian and/or other languages.

In anticipation, why not browse our Catalog page? Bear in mind that the prices there will be reduced by a fifth if you remember to use the (not yet published, so hold your horses) coupon code.

Lucia, our teaching manager, tells me she’ll start to send out the coupon code to existing and former students this evening, the idea being to get the regulars sorted out with their favourite online teachers before signing up new students (hopefully!) from Monday onwards.

Così. I expect I’ll have more to say about the up-coming promotion on Friday, and definitely next week! The Sale begins on Monday Oct. 4th and ends on Sunday Oct. 10th, during which time I’ll be marketing my heart out, so to speak – we have a team of teachers who rely on us, and bills to pay!

If you’d rather not hear it, though, fair enough. Stop reading until Monday Oct. 11th, or, if you’re already convinced the club is a waste of your time, scroll right down now and use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the page.

No really, go do that – it takes just seconds, and honestly? If you don’t appreciate what we do, we’re better off going our separate ways, don’t you think?

Bene. Still here then? So I have a brief public service announcement, and something to ‘approfondire’ in Italian if you have the ‘voglia’ to read. Which reminds me, someone wrote to me the other day that she didn’t need or want to read Italian, just learn to speak the language. Reading HELPS with that, foolish person! Why tie your hands and slow your progress by ignoring such a fantasic opportunity to consolidate what you’ve studied and to learn more? But please yourself…

So anyway, you’re probably well aware that strokes are a leading cause of death and disability in developed countries – it’s probably around one in twenty deaths in the USA, for example, where every year around 600.000 people experience a stroke for the first time (source.)

That said, if you live in the states, which has a population of 328 million or so, you probably figure the odds that it won’t happen to you are pretty good, right?

Yep, that’s what I was counting on, until last Tuesday, at least.

And yet here I am, typing away reasonably quickly, producing words and  sentences that I hope are coherent and worth reading. Rather than lying in a hospital bed, dribbling and staring hopelessly at the neon lights on the ceiling.

Ahah! That’s because my wife phoned for an ambulance within minutes of me calling her from my office but being utterly unable to explain to her what on earth the matter was. Fortunately, it was apparent to her that something serious had happened (I’m not often at a loss for words…)

Turns out that IF you can be gotten to a hospital, ideally one with a dedicated stroke unit, within a few hours of experiencing symtoms (though why wait that long??), then the treatments are so much more effective!

In fact, the sharpest blades in the surgeons’ tool box can only be used within a certain number of hours of the stroke. If you feel odd in the middle of the night, but don’t get seen until lunch, that’s not going to be a good scenario. But catch it really quick and they can flush some potion through you that, at least for me, worked like magic. I was hugely impressed, and had to be persuaded not to leap off the operating table and head for the dooor!

But hey, there are 327, 999, 999 other Americans that this might happen to first, right?

Ah no.

According to this paper, your LTR (lifetime risk) of having a stroke is one in six, which isn’t so reassuring, is it?

And assuming you have at least five friends/family members you care a whit for, that brings you up to close to a certainty that this is going to affect you one way or the other.

But don’t worry. This isn’t complicated, and there isn’t a lot to remember.

Stroke symptoms include droopy mouth, difficulty talking, intense and unusual headache, an arm and/or a leg (on one side) that refuses to respond normally, and vision problems, which I didn’t get (nor the headache – no pain at all, in fact.)

If you, or anyone you know, experience any one of these things, then immediate action will hugely improve treatment options and eventual outcomes. In short, don’t dither, don’t worry about wasting the professionals’ time, get help, fast!

Obviously, there are no guarantees, but hey – better to get the best possible odds, right? You have to call the emergency services right away, or if it’s happening to you, call someone who knows you well and gibber at them. Or if you can’t phone and you’re still conscious, use your good arm to create as much row as you can, banging stuff until someone comes.

Then keep your fingers crossed that you get through it as well as I did, rather than end up like the poor woman in the bed opposite, who called her daughter for help at two a.m. but didn’t get an immediate reply, as the daughter’s phone was off.

She lay on the floor all night, she told me, and by the time she did eventually arrive at the hospital, gettting on for lunchtime the next day, the magic potions were no longer a treatment option.

Doesn’t that suck?

Here’s the promised reading material, from Alice, an Italian assocciation. It begins like this:

L’ictus è un’emergenza. Perciò la persona con sospetto di attacco deve ricevere istantaneamente le cure più adatte. Va contattato subito il 118, perché è fondamentale trasportarla con urgenza in ospedale, precisamente nei centri organizzati per l’emergenza all’ictus, cioè le Unità Urgenza Ictus – Stroke unit.

‘Ictus’ is ‘stroke’, obviously. If you needed a dictionary for that, go to the back of the class.

Further down the page there’s a summary of symptoms:

RIPETIAMO I SINTOMI DELL’ICTUS:

• non riuscire più a muovere (paralisi – plegia) o muovere con minor forza (paresi), un braccio o una gamba o entrambi gli arti di uno stesso lato del corpo;
• accorgersi di avere la bocca storta; rendersi conto di non sentire più, di sentire meno o in maniera diversa (formicolio), un braccio o una gamba o entrambi gli arti di uno stesso lato del corpo;
• non riuscire a vedere bene metà o una parte degli oggetti (emianopsia);
• non essere in grado di coordinare i movimenti e di stare in equilibrio;
• far fatica a parlare sia perché non si articolano bene le parole (disartria) sia perché non si riescono a scegliere le parole giuste o perché non si comprende quanto viene riferito dalle persone intorno (afasia)
• essere colpito da un violento e molto localizzato mal di testa, diverso dal solito

Se si ha uno di questi sintomi bisogna chiamare subito il 118!

L’ ICTUS ED IL TIA SONO EMERGENZE MEDICHE! 

TIAs are Transitory Ischemic Events, by the way, so stroke symptoms that go away, which is better but still needs checking out.

See, the Italian wasn’t so impossible to understand, was it? Read the whole webpage here. Life or death events can be very motivating when it comes to language learning, I find…

And of course, check out Stroke associations near where you live. I expect they’d welcome a donation… And who knows, perhaps you’ll have need of them one day?

A venerdì.

P.S.

This month at EasyReaders.org we have not one but TWO new ‘easy Italian reader’ ebooks for you to check out!

As always, there are free sample chapters. And as always, the audio is available for anyone to listen to online, no purchase required!

The first story is the B2-C1 level ‘Ashraf, l’arciere dell’imperatore‘, which is set in the Italian peninsula in the thirteenth century.

In the early thirteenth century, Frederick II became Holy Roman Emperor and King of the southern parts of Italy. But in Sicily, a large muslim community rebelled against his rule, so were brutally deported, a safe distance away, to the mainland city of Lucera.

An educated man, the Emperor could speak multiple foreign languages, including Arabic. He enjoyed mixing with the wise men of his day, many of whom were muslim scientists, philosophers or political advisors. With their advice and support, he went on to make peace with the Sultan and to become King of Jerusalem.

Fredrick’s relationship with contemporary popes, at the time the ultimate spiritual authorities and so rivals for power in the Italian pensinsula and elsewhere, was much less positive! Perhaps suspicious of the conflicted loyalties of fellow Christians, the emperor recruiting muslim archers, cavalry and even his personal bodyguard from the exiled Sicilian muslim community, men who would be loyal only to him.

Meanwhile, back in Lucera, a muslim young boy is being schooled in archery by his unsmiling, one-armed father…

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 8 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at intermediate level or above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Buy ‘Ashraf, l’arciere dell’imperatore‘, £7.99! | Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) | Catalog

Our second new ebook is not an original story like ‘Ashraf, l’arciere dell’imperatore‘, but is aimed at students of a similar level.

‘Il Medioevo‘ is our ebook version of a thirty-part series of articles with online audio that walks a curious student of Italian through a neglected period of history, from the end of the Roman empire in 476 CE to the fall of Constantinople, nearly a thousand years later in 1453 CE.

While the articles that make up this ebook are available for free at https://onlineitalianclub.com/history/, this version of the material (.pdf, .mobi Kindle-compatible, .epub versions available) is easily printable and/or readable on an ebook reader, such as the Kindle.

Please note: unlike our other ‘easy reader’ ebooks, for reasons of length (over eighty pages of text with online audio) this one does not contain glossaries of difficult words nor comprehension exercises after each chapter. Take a look at the free sample chapters before you buy!

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 30 CHAPTERS to read and listen to!
• Suitable for students at intermediate level or above
• Download your Free Sample Chapters (.pdf)

Buy ‘Il Medioevo ‘, just £5.99 this week! | Free Sample Chapters (.pdf) | Catalog

P.P.S.

Don’t forget Tuesday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, which you can read/listen to for FREE!

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