The coffee cup falls

Sunday breakfast at your parents' house. Your 72-year-old father is telling a story about his neighbour's cat. Halfway through a sentence, his coffee cup falls out of his left hand and clatters onto the kitchen table.

He stares at it.

"Dad?"

He looks at you. His mouth moves but what comes out isn't quite words. His left cheek is drooping. He raises his right arm to reach for a napkin, and when he tries the left one too, it lifts a few centimetres and falls back.

He's embarrassed. "Clumsy," he says — and it comes out "Klumshhh."

It's been 20 seconds since the coffee cup fell.

In those 20 seconds, two million neurons have died. That's what a stroke sounds like from the outside — a mild, almost unremarkable thing. And it's why the single most valuable skill in this module is a 10-second test you can do from across the room.

This module is about two of the most common sudden neurological emergencies: stroke and seizure. Both look dramatic. Neither is rare. And both have a very specific do-the-right-thing-in-the-first-minute response.

Stroke: Time is brain. Every minute of delay costs 1.9 million neurons.
Seizure: Time is information. Nothing in the mouth. Cushion the head. Wait it out.