Shannon Bayluk is changing the face of Stroke
Shannon Bayluk had a stroke in July of 2020. Though the stroke has affected her life, it also has made her an advocate for heart and stroke awareness, not just for seniors, but for younger people like herself.
After sharing her story with people in our community and beyond, she recently had an amazing chance to be an advocate when she presented at the 2024 Canadian Stroke Congress in Calgary on behalf of Heart & Stroke. There, she presented a workshop as a person with lived experience to help share her story and how she does advocacy for survivors.
“I had done a presentation for the nurse practitioners of Ontario through Heart and Stroke, and one of the members from Heart and Stroke had been sitting in on the presentation, and she said, that’s the person that I need to be at Congress,” said Bayluk.
From there, they developed the presentation that she presented at the end of last month.
Bayluk’s story is one that is hard to forget. At 46-years-old and being a mother, she was otherwise very healthy when she had her stroke. Since it was 2020, she was working from her cottage and just about to get on a work call when she felt numbness and tingling on one of her sides. She called a neighbour to come over for help, and they did check for signs of a stroke, but since she was still speaking fine and didn’t have facial drooping, she thought that she had pinched something and the neighbour went home. After following her instinct that something was still not right, she called Healthlinks and the nurse advised her that she was going to send an ambulance.
“I’ve had a number of strokes since. I’ve had some seizures, and they’re still trying to figure out sort of what’s happened. I had heart surgery to fix a hole in my heart, which was one of the reasons that I had the first stroke,” said Bayluk.
She explained that she’s had to retire from her job with the Canadian Government since the stroke and that her life has changed quite a bit but that she still wanted to use the skills that she had honed in her previous career.
Bayluk has been volunteering with Heart and Stroke for a number of years and isn’t new to giving advocacy talks having most recently had a private lunch at the legislature where she spoke about the FAST campaign and then met with the Minister of Health.
She says that her goal is to continue to raise awareness about stroke not only happening to older people and she is campaigning for community hubs for survivors to have greater access to care and meet their needs after returning home. She also feels that by telling her story she gives people a person to connect to and an individual’s story to remember.
Her advice to health-care professionals is to try to find the time to let people who have had strokes communicate.
“What I advocate for is that you get enough time with your doctor. Give us the extra time. Let us have somebody else in the room. They can try to help us to get across the words we need to get across, because if you’re rushing, you’re trying to get your words out, and you stumble. Give us a time of day for our appointment that’s the best suited time for us because at the end of the day, I’m tired. I might not be able to give you all the information I need to give you because my brain’s tired. So, there’s a lot of things to consider for a stroke patient that is different for a regular patient,” she said.
Bayluck also councils other stroke survivors when needed, sharing her experience and recognizing that everyone’s stroke experience is different.
“Every stroke is different. . .There’re similarities along the way, and talking with people gives you some comfort, there is absolutely no expectation of what will be, which makes it very, very difficult. You can have a conversation with someone and say, ‘Oh yes, yes, that’s very similar to what I’ve had,’ but there’s never one thing that you can say is absolutely the same, which makes it very difficult. Even talking with doctors, right? You know, the symptoms can be similar, but often they’re not the same, which makes it very complex,” she said.
Bayluk recommends that people who have had a stroke and would like to connect with other people like themselves check out the Heart and Stroke Foundation as they have online groups which can be helpful for people who can no longer drive out to an in-person group.
She thinks everyone in our community should know that time is of the essence when it comes to strokes and to get help as soon as possible.
“I want people to pay attention and never ignore a sign. It’s better to get to a hospital and be checked. I know you don’t want to waste anybody’s time in the hospital but having a stroke has turned my world and my life upside down, and now I’m doing my best to make sure that it doesn’t ever happen to anybody else,” said Bayluk.
Residents should remember the acronym FAST which stands for facial drooping, arm weakness, slurred speech, time to go to the hospital. Also, when checking for arm weakness you need to hold your arms up for 20-30 seconds to determine if there is weakness because some people can hold their arms up for short periods of time when still having a stroke.
