As doctors, we feel we are omnipotent. We bring people back from cardiac arrests, car accidents, we stop their heart for open heart surgery and then start it again. We play God. And yet, there is one disease that always humbles us… stroke. It’s an outcome that some fear worse than death. Yet, it’s something that is rising in prevalence yet the science is not keeping up as fast as it should.

In this episode of HeART of Medicine, Dr. Payal Kohli and  Dr. Omid Jazaeri discuss their own emotions about when they treated their very first stroke patient during medical school. They talk about the emotions physicians face everyday when dealing with stroke patients - sadness, empathy, frustration and guilt. Because a stroke changes the very core of everything that defines us - our autonomy, independence, our personality, our very being, it’s unlike any other disease.

But hope is not lost! Drs. Kohli and Jazaeri review the systematic increases in educational efforts, awareness, resources and preventive efforts and how that could change the landscape of stroke medicine.

This episode, in honor of May which is Stroke Awareness Month, leaves you uplifted and empowered to tackle and push the limits of medicine with a disease that can affect any of us or our loved ones!