Allana Crew was on the phone to her dad back in 2019 when she felt “something go” in her brain.

She was 32, a healthy mum-of-two. Her youngest child was just four months old.

Stroke was not a word she had ever imagined she’d hear a doctor say.

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“I can’t even explain the feeling,” she said.

“I went to go to my husband to say something’s wrong. He was changing my son’s nappy at the time and I couldn’t talk.

“He said, ‘Are you joking? Talk to me.’ And I couldn’t. I could hear what he was saying, but nothing would come out.”

When Allana, from Loch in Victoria’s Gippsland region, could finally speak, her words were slurred.

At the local hospital, the uncertainty continued.

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She was young, didn’t smoke and didn’t drink. Doctors initially thought it could have been Bell’s palsy.

Allana was being cared for in Gippsland, in a hospital an hour-and-a-half from Melbourne.

Despite the concerns around her diagnosis at the local hospital, help quicky came via a computer.

Through a telehealth link called Telestroke, a stroke specialist in Melbourne was able to see Allana, speak to her husband and guide the team around her.

The specialist asked Allana’s husband, because she was still struggling to talk, if she was normally like this. The answer was no.

He saw the signs: the slurred speech, the drooping face, the strange changes in her vision. Her symptoms were not textbook-clear, and the first scan did not show the answer. But the specialist pushed for more imaging.

Allana Crew’s face drooped, which was a key sign she was suffering a stroke. Credit: Supplied

Days later, an MRI confirmed Allana had suffered a stroke.

Without the connection into the regional hospital, the outcome could have been very different with the expertise sitting in Melbourne, too far away.

For Allana, the benefit of telehealth continued long after her diagnosis. It meant she did not have to travel while seriously unwell, with two young children at home.

“It’s so handy ... we’re an hour-and-a-half from Melbourne,” she said.

“You don’t have to travel, especially when you’re really sick and you’ve got young kids.”

Today, Allana is doing well. She still gets tired more easily and has experienced panic attacks that came from surviving the stroke but she is getting better each day.

She also has a message to young stroke survivors.

“You will be OK in the end,” she said. “Life does get better.”

But her story is also a reminder of what rapid medical attention can mean in regional Australia.

Kelvin Hill, the executive director of stroke programs in research and innovation for the Stroke Foundation, explains why.

“The last 15 years in particular, we’ve had great advances in stroke care. The telehealth system has been one of those and Victoria has been the sort of the leader nationally in setting that up,” he said.

“But 15 years ago, for example, you would have got to ED, the care there probably still would have been quite good, but just the specialty in picking up the signs and symptoms, which can be difficult.

“It’s based on the history and the experience of the stroke doctors, which can provide unique clues, which the generalists or the ED physicians sometimes miss. And so that enables more rapid decision making, quicker treatment and better outcomes.”

The Stroke Foundation urges Australians to remember the FAST test:

F — Face: Check the person’s face. Has their mouth drooped?

A — Arms: Can they lift both arms?

S — Speech: Is their speech slurred? Do they understand you?

T — Time: Time is critical. Call Triple Zero immediately.