The numbness at the hockey game

One · What happened

A numb arm at the rink, and a stroke found at a local hospital

On Sunday the Associated Press reported a statement from Allison Herwitt, chief of staff to the fifty-three-year-old senator. His arm began to go numb on Saturday at his son’s hockey game, she said, and a local hospital found he had had a stroke. He was then transferred to Johns Hopkins for further monitoring and “is responding well to treatment.” Herwitt added that his office is optimistic he will make a full recovery.

The CDC counts more than seven hundred ninety-five thousand strokes a year in the United States, one every forty seconds. Its list of warning signs includes sudden numbness or weakness in the face, arm or leg on one side of the body, the sign Murphy reported on Saturday. The list also names sudden confusion, trouble seeing and a sudden severe headache with no known cause. The agency tells readers to call 911 right away. Its page adds a warning against driving to the hospital or letting someone else drive.

Two · What it is doing

The check a reader runs on his own arm

A man reads the AP story on his phone on Sunday afternoon and, before the third paragraph, flexes the fingers of his left hand to see whether they answer. They do. The relief lasts about a minute before the ordinary detail catches up with him, an arm gone numb at a child’s hockey game, in a rink full of parents watching the ice. The statement names no cause, and he starts to supply one, the long campaign season or the pace of a senator’s week. Each guess lets him decide he is not the man in the rink.

The CDC’s figures show how little ground a reader has under him on the afternoon a story like this one reaches his phone. Of the people in one survey, ninety-three percent recognized sudden numbness on one side as a symptom. Only thirty-eight percent were aware of all the major symptoms and knew to call 911, a separate figure shows. The two numbers answer different questions, so a reader can know the first sign by sight and still never have decided what he would do next. A man whose arm goes heavy beside a crowd of parents watching a game has every reason to give it one more minute.

Two days before an election, the story also arrives in the voice of a side. One reader counts the senator as his own and feels the dread twice, once for the man and once for Tuesday. Another counts him an opponent and may feel a flicker of something he would not say at the supper table, or a cold shrug that files a hospital bed under developments. Both are reading a medical statement for who gains. Who wins on Tuesday and what a hospital stay does to a Senate calendar are arguments for other people. A phone screen holds the flicker of a sin and the dread of a failing body side by side.

Three · Where the ground is

My hope is in you

David wrote Psalm 39 after a stretch of silence that, by his own account, did nothing for him. Then he prayed, “O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!” (Psalm 39:4). The request is for the measure of his days, with no date attached. A few verses on he turned to the one question that matters about a short life, “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you” (Psalm 39:7).

Mark tells of four men who carried a paralyzed friend to a crowded house in Capernaum, found the door blocked and opened the roof over Jesus. “And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven’” (Mark 2:3-5). The text does not say that his paralysis came from a particular sin of his. Mark reports that Jesus went first to the debt. When the scribes questioned him in their hearts, he named his authority to forgive sins and told the man, “rise, pick up your bed, and go home” (Mark 2:10-11). The legs were mended that day. The forgiveness was the larger gift, bought by the death and bodily resurrection of the same Jesus.

Obadiah had a word for Edom, who stood aside while his brother’s city fell. The prophet told him not to gloat on the day of his brother’s misfortune (Obadiah 11-12). Some readers feel that sin as a flicker on a day like this, and others feel the fear of a body that can fail with no warning. Christ died for the flicker and carries the dread.

The faith Jesus saw in Capernaum belonged to the men holding the corners of the mat. A congregation does the same work when it drives a member to the emergency room and sits with the family in the waiting room. It also carries a meal to the porch and reads a name from the front on Sunday morning. Asaph wrote of the day all of that runs out, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

The first three take an evening at home and a phone call. The last two put you in front of other people.

1. 01

   Tape the CDC’s list of stroke signs inside a kitchen cabinet.

   Print the list from the CDC’s stroke page and read its first line, sudden numbness or weakness in the face, arm or leg on one side of the body. Tape the sheet inside the cabinet where the glasses are kept, so that everyone in the house walks past it. A family that has read the list at the sink knows what a drooping face looks like.

2. 02

   Settle the 911 rule with whoever lives with you.

   Sit down with your spouse or whoever else shares the house and agree on one rule for the day somebody’s face droops. Anyone who sees a drooping face or a slurred sentence dials 911 first. Nobody drives the person to the hospital, as the CDC instructs. Write the street address of the house on the same sheet, in block letters, for a frightened child to read to the dispatcher.

3. 03

   Put a blood pressure check on the calendar.

   Call your doctor’s office and ask when your blood pressure was last taken. If the answer is longer ago than you like, book the visit while you are still on the line and put the date on the refrigerator. A nurse takes the reading in a few minutes, and the doctor decides what it means.

4. 04

   Pray for a stranger’s recovery before you think about his party.

   Tonight ask the LORD to restore Chris Murphy, to keep him near his son and to give the doctors at Johns Hopkins wisdom. If the man sits on the side you vote against and the prayer sticks in your throat, tell God that and ask him to deal with the flicker in you. Obadiah 12 sets the standard for a day like this one.

5. 05

   Find out who in your church would carry you.

   Ask a pastor or an elder how the congregation gets a member to a hospital in an emergency, who sits with the family and who brings the meals. Offer to be one of the four. If you live alone, ask for the name of a member within ten minutes of your house and trade phone numbers before you need them.