A Thornhill woman’s stroke selfie, a chilling but “incredible” 47-second video of her having a stroke, has turned into a viral learning tool.

Stacey Yepes, 49, filmed herself in her car to show doctors her symptoms a day after she had been sent home following a similar attack and told it was stress.

“My tongue feels very numb,” she says into the camera. Her speech slurs and one side of her face droops.

“I don’t know why this is happening to me,” Yepes says. It was her third brief but terrifying attack in a few days.

“Doctor said to breathe in, breathe out, manage stress,” she says on the video. “I’m trying.”

This time, she went to Mount Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto where an ER doctor recognized transient ischemic attacks: small but serious strokes.

She was sent to the stroke unit of the Krembil Neuroscience Centre at Toronto Western Hospital.

“It's true that I hadn't slept well the last few days and that I have a stressful job,” said Yepes, who works as a legal secretary.

“But I was pretty sure that the symptoms I had experienced were due to a stroke.”

The University Health Network decided to release her “stroke selfie” on YouTube this week to teach people about the symptoms of a stroke.

“We've never had a patient do this before,” Dr. Cheryl Jaigobin said.

“And I guess for a patient who wanted someone to believe her symptoms were real, it was absolutely incredible,” said Jaigobin, a stroke neurologist at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre.

Atherosclerosis created by a buildup of plaque in her arteries caused Yepes’s strokes, said Jaigobin. A blood clot formed on the plaque, then blocked a small artery leading to one side of her brain, paralyzing the opposite side of her body.

“Stroke can affect anyone at any age, and in fact studies are showing that younger people are presenting with stroke because things that we usually saw in older age, like high blood pressure and diabetes and high cholesterol, in our modern North American society they tend to occur at a younger age,” said Jaigobin in a UHN release.

Ischemic strokes caused by a blocked artery can be treated with a drug that dissolves the clot if it is administered within five hours, the hospital said.

Yepes, who suffered the strokes in March, was treated then enrolled in a stroke rehabilitation program that involves medication, a change to a healthy diet and daily exercise. She hopes to return to work in July.

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“Everybody is really shocked that I had the presence of mind to take it,” she said of her medical team.

“So, of course, they warned me should any symptoms happen again, dial 911 first — and then do the video.”