CHICAGO, Illinois (NBC) -- For years, Janie Voyles has cared for the sickest babies at Rush University Medical Center. And then last spring, she became a patient.
"My face was drooping. My mouth was crooked. My youngest son was there with me. He took me and sat me down and called 911," Voyles said.
But even before the ambulance arrived, she recalls feeling perfectly normal again.
In fact, things weren't normal at all. Janie Voyles had had a mini-stroke or TIA.
"It's very similar to a stroke except the injury to the blood vessel recovers so it heals quickly. And their inclination is to say you know, I don't know, I slept on it today. Or it will go away. It went away, I went back to myself, why should I tell anybody," Dr. Shyam Prabhakaran, a neurologist, said.
But the newest research shows that telling a doctor within 24 hours may significantly protect you from a full blown stroke that could lead to permanent disability or death.
It's so crucial that in the ER at Rush University Medical Center, patients with these symptoms are treated by a TIA express team.
Patients are fast tracked into specific testing that looks for evidence of a mini-stroke.
"We know that T-I-A is like the tremor before the earthquake. If you have a TIA, you stand a substantial risk of having a stroke within days," Dr. Prabhakaran said.
Imaging doesn't always yield certain diagnosis. So it's paired with a careful clinical exam.
Hours later, doctors decide either to admit the patient, "Because clearly they're at risk for having a stroke within hours," Dr. Prabhakaran said, or to give them medications that lower the risk of another stroke significantly.
"Somewhere around 80% lower if you get started on those medicines the same day of your TIA," Dr. Prabhakaran said
"I look at it as a warning," Voyles said.
Janie now takes an anti-clotting medication every day and she's glad she went straight to the hospital. Still, she gets why people ignore warning signs. She almost did.
"We've all read -- heart attack signs, stroke signs ... just believe them. It's real. And I had not the first idea that it would happen to me," Voyles said.
