Senior Constable Karl Bevin was photographing the sunrise at Cornwallis Beach, Auckland, on a day off when things went weird.
“It was a tingling down my right arm into my hand,” says Karl, a forensic photographer in Tāmaki Makaurau. “There was a loss of fine motor skills in my fingers – I couldn’t use my phone, or text, or use the dials on my camera.
“I thought either I had really cold fingers, or something was seriously wrong.”
As it turned out, something was seriously wrong.
The tingling sensation lasted about 20 minutes, and Karl also noticed a temporary slight slurring of his speech.
His man brain kicked in, countering his concern with the blokey thought that everything was bound to be OK. “One side of me was saying ‘This is weird’ and the other was saying ‘You’ll be right’.”
The tingling came back as he was driving home. When it recurred at home he decided to head to Waitakere Hospital - and while he was waiting in the Emergency Department, it happened for a fourth time.
“They told me everything pointed to it being a series of mini-strokes,” he says. “I didn’t know there was such a thing as a mini-stroke.”
Karl underwent a raft of examinations and scans and was given medication and blood-thinners. He spent the next five days in hospital – “a weird, lonely place to be when you’re waiting for tests and being monitored every three hours”.
The tests did not establish an underlying cause for the mini-strokes, which are officially known as TIAs – transient ischaemic attacks. Now Karl is at home, awaiting the results of further tests.
He’s on post-stroke medication and something to bring down his cholesterol level, which is a potential contributor but not, in Karl’s case, dangerously high.
Karl has been in Police for 26 years, a serious crash investigator for 21 years and a forensic photographer for the past two.
He’s 49, stands six feet tall and a healthy 91kg, and passes his PCT at gold card standard. He’s also a volunteer firefighter – not what most people would consider a candidate for a stroke.
Funny how you don’t think it will happen to you, he says.
“Two things struck me the most – one was ‘Surely this can’t be me having a stroke right now’ and the other was ‘Do I really need to go to hospital?’
“Afterwards I started to worry about what I perceived to be the stigma, of what people would think when I said I’d had a stroke. I also felt uncomfortable telling my friends, so I put it in a video [embedded below] with my own words and the photos I love taking.
“When you think about a stroke victim, you think about an elderly person in a wheelchair – that just didn’t fit my profile.
“I started to feel like I was old and useless - but I’ve got over that and think this is something that people in my age group need to know about.”
Karl expects to be off work for at least a couple of weeks. He can’t drive until certified fit to by a doctor – at least three months away - and has been talking to Police about potential alternative transport arrangements when he clocks back on.
He now wants to encourage others – particularly those approaching or in middle-age – to realise they too could be at risk and to take their wellbeing seriously.
“My advice would be: 1 - don’t take life for granted; 2 – work isn’t everything; and 3 – look after yourselves.”
A TIA is caused by a problem with blood supply to the brain. It does not usually have an ongoing impact on day-to-day activities but does increase the risk of a stroke, particularly in the days immediately after. You do not have to be elderly or unfit.
Stroke Foundation NZ recommends getting your blood pressure, cholesterol and heartbeat checked to reduce the risk, and preventative steps such as changing diet, particularly less salt; quitting smoking; reducing alcohol intake; and increasing exercise.
Karl considers himself lucky to have had what turned out to be a relatively gentle warning that all was not well.
“For me now, it’s about lifestyle choices,” says Karl. “It’s about being able to enjoy life, not getting stressed, staying active and getting plenty of exercise.”
Find out more at the Stroke Foundation NZ website - stroke.org.nz