The symptoms of a stroke depend on what part of the brain and how much of the brain tissue is affected.
Stroke symptoms usually come on suddenly—in minutes to an hour.
There is usually no pain associated with the symptoms.
The symptoms may come and go, go away totally, or get worse over the course of several hours.
If the symptoms go away completely in a short time (fewer than 24 hours), the episode is called a transient ischemic attack (TIA).
A third of all strokes occur during sleep, so people first notice the symptoms when they wake up.
These are the common symptoms of stroke:
- Weakness in the arm or leg or both on the same side: This can range from total paralysis to a very mild weakness. Complete numbness or a pins-and-needles feeling may be present on one side of your body or part of one side of your body.
- Weakness in the muscles of the face: Your face may droop or look lopsided. Speech may be slurred because you can't control the movement of your lips or tongue.
- Difficulty speaking: You can't speak, speech may be very slurred, or when you speak, the words sound fine but do not make sense.
- Coordination problems: You may seem uncoordinated and stumble or have difficulty walking or difficulty picking up objects.
- Dizziness: You may feel drunk or dizzy or have difficulty swallowing.
- Vision problems: You may develop difficulty with vision, such as double vision, loss of peripheral (side) vision, or blindness. (Blurred vision by itself is not usually a symptom of stroke.)
- Sudden headache: A sudden, severe headache may strike like "a bolt out of the blue." Some people have called this the worst headache of their lives.
- Loss of consciousness: You may become unconscious, stuporous, or hard to arouse and could die.