St. Joseph-Ogden rolls past St. Thomas More, 59-28
Photo of the Day | January 25, 2023
Spartans dive in to pull off hardcourt upset
ST. JOSEPH - Spartans' Ellie Ward goes after a loose ball with Mattoon's Xylia Greeson during their non-conference game Monday. St. Joseph-Ogden rallied back from a 19-point second-quarter deficit to beat the Green Wave 52-49. With five more contests left in the season, the win extends the team's current win streak to three games.CUPHD offers low-cost radon tests, limited supply available
American Legion to host fish fry benefit for Troop 40
St. Joseph - Tickets are on sale now for three fish frys to raise money for St. Joseph's Boy Scouts.
The American Legion will host the first of three fish frys this Friday, January 27, the next one on February 24, and the final event on March 24.
The $10 meal includes two sides and a drink. Food will be served starting 4:30 pm and continue until 7 pm or until the fish is sold out on all three dates. Advance tickets can be purchased this Wednesday 4:30 to 6:30 pm at the IGA. Meal tickets can also be bought at the door on the day of the fry.
For more information visit the event Facebook page here.
SJO dance team qualifies for state finals, Unity dancers will also be there
Sectional standings 1 Jacksonville 89.20
2 Clinton 82.13
3 Unity 78.08
4 Quincy Notre Dame 77.23
5 Lincoln 74.30
6 St. Joseph-Ogden 73.60
Guest Commentary | We can’t go wrong with good information
We like good news but typically the news is not good. Too often no news is good news. In reality, no news is bad news for us all.
There is lots of recent bad news. A crazed gunman entered a dance hall in Monterey Park, California killing 10 people and wounding many innocent people. A former employee walked into an Evansville, Indiana Walmart and shot an employee in the face in the store breakroom. The shooter was killed by local police. A planned protest in downtown Atlanta turned violent when protestors damaged stores and burned a police car over the weekend.
We did hear astonishing good news from Monterey Park. Brandon Tsay confronted the gunman at a second location where he was about to enter and kill more people. He heroically wrestled the gun away from the killer and pointed it at him causing the gunman to leave the scene. Only God knows how many lives Tsay saved. He is a true hero.
News is always happening nationally, locally and individually to us all. We need the information whether it’s good or bad. We need the national and regional news but the local news is up front and close to us.
For example, all around us we are targets of scams, thieves and prowling bad people. Americans were scammed to the tune 5.8 billion dollars in 2021. (Digital Guardian). We are never beyond being duped. Today, daily text messages, emails, phone calls and mail come to Americans phishing for a sucker who will buy the false story they are telling. They are good at what they do.
My son was away in a foreign country when I was duped out of $350 years ago. The caller was very professional sounding and convincing. I believed that if I did not pay the money owed by my son it would negatively impact his career. This was at the beginning of the telephone scam industry and I paid him the money. Later I realized that I had been scammed.
Years ago, a dear friend received a telephone call from someone posing as an IRS agent. The scammer told the senior adult man that he owed $45,000 in back taxes for various reasons. The friend was about 90 years old and living on a meager retirement income. He didn’t realize he was being scammed, was overwhelmed with anxiety and killed himself.
“At every level of life there is a new devil,” an old friend once said. At every stage of life there are new twists, turns and curves. We are never beyond being informed, learning and developing. Young people make mistakes but so do old people. We often think we’ve lived long enough and know most everything, but we don’t. Most of us have become more aware of this problem but crooks work at catching people off guard and are constantly developing new schemes.
Today, we have search engines and are inundated with news and information. However, we don’t hear all the news nor do we know everything we need to know when we need to know. Often, we learn the hard way. This is why education is expensive. Life experience education is often the most expensive and difficult of all learning processes. Even in life education we learn but we don’t always utilize the life experience very much. Too often we repeat the same mistakes hoping for a different outcome.
We can’t go wrong with good information. This is why you need the publication you are reading. Your local paper and online news sources are crucial to a community’s health and overall well-being. Local newspapers, blogs and online sources tell what is happening in your local town and county. Support this news source with your subscription and advertising needs. County newspapers that have been around for years continue to close. Every week I receive notification of a newspaper printing its final edition and that’s not good news.
Dr. Glenn Mollette is a syndicated American columnist and author of Grandpa's Store, American Issues, and ten other books. He is read in all 50 states. The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily representative of any other group or organization.
This article is the sole opinions of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of The Sentinel. We welcome comments and views from our readers. Submit your letters to the editor or commentary on a current event 24/7 to editor@oursentinel.com.
Photo Gallery | Spartans notch win #18 to finish the season above .500
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Aiden Bell picks up win for Hoopeston at multi-quad wrestling meet
Photo of the Day | January 22, 2023
Cheering for Jones
ST. JOSEPH - St. Joseph-Ogden wrestlers Karleigh Spain and Camden Getty cheer for teammate Quincy Jones after his second-period pin over Hoopeston Area's Nick Brown. Up 7-2 in their 285-pound match, Jones stuck Brown at 2:34 to give the Spartans a 30-6 margin heading into the lighter weight class matches at Saturday's multi-quad meet. SJO went 3-0 on the day to finished their regular season with 18 wins against 16 losses.Photo Gallery | Lightweights lift SJO in home win over Clinton
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Emergency assessment needed even when stroke symptoms disappear
Dallas - Stroke symptoms that disappear in under an hour, known as a transient ischemic attack (TIA), need emergency assessment to help prevent a full-blown stroke, according to a new American Heart Association scientific statement published today in the Association’s journal Stroke. The statement offers a standardized approach to evaluating people with suspected TIA, with guidance specifically for hospitals in rural areas that may not have access to advanced imaging or an on-site neurologist.
TIA is a temporary blockage of blood flow to the brain. Each year, about 240,000 people in the U.S. experience a TIA, although this estimate may represent underreporting of TIA because symptoms tend to go away within an hour. While the TIA itself doesn’t cause permanent damage, nearly 1 in 5 of those who have a TIA will have a full-blown stroke within three months after the TIA, almost half of which will happen within two days. For this reason, a TIA is more accurately described as a warning stroke rather than a “mini-stroke,” as it’s often called.
TIA symptoms are the same as stroke symptoms, only temporary. They begin suddenly and may have any or all of these characteristics:
- Symptoms begin strong then fade;
- Symptoms typically last less than an hour;
- Facial droop;
- Weakness on one side of the body;
- Numbness on one side of the body;
- Trouble finding the right words/slurred speech; or
- Dizziness, vision loss or trouble walking.
The F.A.S.T. acronym for stroke symptoms can be used to identify a TIA: F ― Face drooping or numbness; A ― Arm weakness; S ― Speech difficulty; T ― Time to call 9-1-1, even if the symptoms go away.
“Confidently diagnosing a TIA is difficult since most patients are back to normal function by the time they arrive at the emergency room,” said Hardik P. Amin, M.D., chair of the scientific statement writing committee and associate professor of neurology and medical stroke director at Yale New Haven Hospital, St. Raphael Campus in New Haven, Connecticut. “There also is variability across the country in the workup that TIA patients may receive. This may be due to geographic factors, limited resources at health care centers or varying levels of comfort and experience among medical professionals.”
For example, Amin said, “Someone with a TIA who goes to an emergency room with limited resources may not get the same evaluation that they would at a certified stroke center. This statement was written with those emergency room physicians or internists in mind – professionals in resource-limited areas who may not have immediate access to a vascular neurologist and must make challenging evaluation and treatment decisions.”
The statement also includes guidance to help health care professionals tell the difference between a TIA and a “TIA mimic” – a condition that shares some signs with TIA but is due to other medical conditions such as low blood sugar, a seizure or a migraine. Symptoms of a TIA mimic tend to spread to other parts of the body and build in intensity over time.
Who is at risk for a TIA?
People with cardiovascular risk factors, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol and smoking, are at high risk for stroke and TIA. Other conditions that increase risk of a TIA include peripheral artery disease, atrial fibrillation, obstructive sleep apnea and coronary artery disease. In addition, a person who has had a prior stroke is at high risk for TIA.
Which tests come first once in the emergency room?
After assessing for symptoms and medical history, imaging of the blood vessels in the head and neck is an important first assessment. A non-contrast head CT should be done initially in the emergency department to rule out intracerebral hemorrhage and TIA mimics. CT angiography may be done as well to look for signs of narrowing in the arteries leading to the brain. Nearly half of people with TIA symptoms have narrowing of the large arteries that lead to the brain.
A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan is the preferred way to rule out brain injury (i.e., a stroke), ideally done within 24 hours of when symptoms began. About 40% of patients presenting in the ER with TIA symptoms will actually be diagnosed with a stroke based on MRI results. Some emergency rooms may not have access to an MRI scanner, and they may admit the patient to the hospital for MRI or transfer them to a center with rapid access to one.
Blood work should be completed in the emergency department to rule out other conditions that may cause TIA-like symptoms, such as low blood sugar or infection, and to check for cardiovascular risk factors like diabetes and high cholesterol.
Once TIA is diagnosed, a cardiac work-up is advised due to the potential for heart-related factors to cause a TIA. Ideally, this assessment is done in the emergency department, however, it could be coordinated as a follow-up visit with the appropriate specialist, preferably within a week of having a TIA. An electrocardiogram to assess heart rhythm is suggested to screen for atrial fibrillation, which is detected in up to 7% of people with a stroke or TIA. The American Heart Association recommends that long-term heart monitoring within six months of a TIA is reasonable if the initial evaluation suggests a heart rhythm-related issue as the cause of a TIA or stroke.
Early neurology consultation, either in-person or via telemedicine, is associated with lower death rates after a TIA. If consultation isn’t possible during the emergency visit, the statement suggests following up with a neurologist ideally within 48 hours but not longer than one week after a TIA, given the high risk of stroke in the days after a TIA. The statement cites research that about 43% of people who had an ischemic stroke (caused by a blood clot) had a TIA within the week before their stroke.
Assessing stroke risk after TIA
A rapid way to assess a patient’s risk of future stroke after TIA is the 7-point ABCD2 score, which stratifies patients into low, medium and high risk based on Age, Blood pressure, Clinical features (symptoms), Duration of symptoms (less than or greater than 60 minutes) and Diabetes. A score of 0-3 indicates low risk, 4-5 is moderate risk and 6-7 is high risk. Patients with moderate to high ABCD2 scores may be considered for hospitalization.
Collaboration among emergency room professionals, neurologists and primary care professionals is critical to ensure the patient receives a comprehensive evaluation and a well-communicated outpatient plan for future stroke prevention at discharge.
“Incorporating these steps for people with suspected TIA may help identify which patients would benefit from hospital admission, versus those who might be safely discharged from the emergency room with close follow-up,” Amin said. “This guidance empowers physicians at both rural and urban academic settings with information to help reduce the risk of future stroke.”
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