Could two words save your life?

Brain attack.
It's not a term that meant much to Linda Boyle.
She wasn't thinking it as she rushed around the grocery store, dodging holiday shoppers.
It was perhaps the furthest thing from her mind as she stood in the checkout line while the Jann Arden song, playing overhead, faded in and out.
It didn't cross her mind when her vision blurred while reading a story on the Royal Family in a tabloid magazine.
She didn't even give it any thought as she lay paralyzed on the store's cold tile floor, a white-haired man kneeling over her yelling, "Someone call 911; this woman
is having a stroke."...
Now, brain attack means everything to Linda Boyle.It was 15 years ago this bank teller and mother of three was rushed to the hospital after collapsing in the grocery store. A CAT scan revealed she had a blood clot in her brain. She was 40.
If that had happened today, Boyle wouldn't have had a stroke, she would have had what is becoming increasingly known as a brain attack.
As neurological researchers discover more about the brain, medical terms used to describe how it operates change. That's exactly what is happening with the term stroke.
It is an emerging term that some doctors, stroke victims and stroke prevention groups have adopted in an effort to "scare" people into taking the same quick action after a brain attack as they would after a heart attack.
For Boyle, the term stroke no longer exists in her vocabulary. According to her, the episode she had in 1993 was no less than an attack on her brain.
"Just say that day at the grocery store I didn't go down; no one but me noticed my symptoms. I would have walked out of that store, picked my kids up from school and entertained a house full of guests that evening. I may have got around to visiting my doctor, but by then it would have been too late."
"I was like many people, I didn't educate myself on the changing world around me. My ignorance could have cost me my life."
Vladimir Hachinski, neurologist with the London Health Science Centre in Ontario, is known as the doctor who coined the term "brain attack". He says he was tired of having patients come to him long after the first sign of stroke occurred. He was forced to tell them it was too late; if they had only come to him sooner.
In 1991 he used the term brain attack in public for the first time. It didn't take long before it caught on.
It is a term that is now being used by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and by neurologists right here at home.
"I made up the term because the word "stroke" is an old phrase to mean struck down by the hand of God. In other words nothing can be done. But strokes are treatable and preventable, especially if the patient gets to the emergency room within three hours."
Hachinski says he doesn't necessarily think the term brain attack should replace stroke. It's a label to emphasize to people that any sudden loss of function is an emergency. Even if the symptoms go away, the danger doesn't.
"I want to scare them; it's serious. Most people would rather die of a heart attack than live with a stroke. It's better to scare them into being prompt, rather than have to tell them they are too late."
But getting society to adopt the phrase 'brain attack' is not as simple as it sounds. John Edwards, professor of psychology at Saint Francis Xavier University and a hobby linguist, says people will only use a new word if there is a compelling reason to do so.
"You want to have a word that alerts people, but at the same time the word stroke has been around for a long time. When someone says they have had a stroke, a red flag already goes up for most people."
"The words 'brain attack' seems almost a little too frightening."
Edwards says he was actually quite surprised to hear of the proposed change. The reason is because most often society tends to alter terms to make them softer, instead of startling.
"This whole thing is actually very unique because it is moving in the opposite direction. We tend to move to words that are more euphemistic, so instead of saying, "she died," we say "she passed away". They are saying we need to get away from the soft word "stroke" and hit them between the eyes with "brain attack."
Edwards cautions that some stroke victim may not be so accepting of the change.
If we get too politically correct, the overall effect is going to be people won't take the new word seriously, he says.
"I don't think calling something a brain attack instead of a stroke carries any added meaning. If anything, it's not very specific. An attack on the brain could mean anything."
For Isabelle Gallant, it doesn't matter what terminology doctors use, the first sign of stroke was scary enough to prompt her to get to the hospital.
After a weekend spent with her son at the family cottage, Gallant was preparing to flip the mattress on her bed. A sudden sense of intense anxiety ran through the 84-year-old's body. The next thing she knew she couldn't speak.
"It was the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me," says the New Glasgow woman. "I kept telling my son to drive faster, but he wouldn't. I tried to speak and I had no voice."
Gallant was one of the lucky ones. This former nurse was familiar enough with the warning signs of a stroke to know she had to get herself to the emergency room fast.
Doctors were able to treat Gallant before she suffered permanent brain damage. Besides having to take a multitude of daily medication, Gallant says her life is back to normal.