Quick action gave Rob a full recovery

Rob got up and took his daughter to high school on March 31, just like he’d done a hundred times before.

But that Tuesday would prove to be far from usual.

He headed to his office little suspecting he was moments away from a major stroke.

“I tried to hook the mouse in the right side of the laptop. I couldn't do it. My right side was totally gone.”

A coworker stopped by to say hello.

“I couldn’t even say hi,” Rob recalls.

Fortunately, Rob’s coworker recognized the signs and symptoms of stroke.  He asked Rob to perform a few simple tasks that indicate a stroke, then he dialed 911.

“I was 46,“ Rob remembers. “I didn't really know at the time what was going on. They wheeled me out of the office on a gurney and took me to Providence Hospital in Southfield, Michigan.”

Again, Rob was fortunate. As one of his doctors explains, “Stroke is an emergency, and it needs to be acted upon immediately. You need to recognize the signs of a stroke and call 911 immediately. Know where the centers of excellence are for stroke. Where the certified stroke centers are. Because not all hospitals are stroke centers. And it's important that you get to a hospital that offers a variety of complete stroke care. Many hospitals are still treating stroke with older technologies. We have a stroke team on call, 24/7, ready to help these patients.”

The St. John Health System team quickly recognized Rob’s condition and went into action, using advanced stroke technologies. In the ER, they administered TPA, a drug that opens up the blood vessel and binds to the clot to help dissolve it. But it wasn’t working fast enough.

“So we went in and physically took it out,” Rob’s doctor, James Mick, recalls. As Dr. Mick explained it to Rob, “Well, you have a vacuum cleaner at home?” The penumbra basically works the same way. “It’s a tiny catheter with a device on the end that fragments the clot. It bites off little tiny nibbles,” which it then suctions out to reopen the vessel. Amazingly, the entire penumbra process
took less than five minutes.

Dr. Mick said, “In the past, we would work at that for an hour, maybe two, to try to open it up.” It worked as it was intended to do, and it worked very, very quickly.” Rob was extremely fortunate. Removing the clot allowed blood to flow back into the brain and nourish the oxygen-starved area. The faster the blood flow and oxygen are returned, the better chance a patient has of not suffering permanent brain damage.

Rob’s recovery has been equally remarkable. He was speaking the next day and gained his physical abilities back just as swiftly. He says there are small things he still has to work on, but overall he knows how fortunate he has been.

“There are many things that we can do for your stroke,”’Dr. Mick says. “From the moment you get to the emergency department, it is a well-worn pathway of tried and true technologies. But until that person comes into the emergency department, it's beyond our control,” Dr Mick reminds us.

He is quick to praise Rob’s coworkers and wife for taking the speedy actions needed to allow them to do their job. Rob and his family are equally quick to praise Dr. Mick and the entire emergency staff for all they did for him.

But as Dr. Mick says, “This is why we do what we do. Why we get up at three in the morning … to see outcomes like this … to see him and his family smiling. That’s why I went into medicine.”