Jillene’s Story: After Stroke, Energy Abounds

I thought my eyes were going bad so I went to an eye doctor to get new glasses.

Went to my eye care place and told them my eye went blind, I couldn't see nothing but black in my right eye. She called the doctor because he wasn’t in the office and he was going to send me to a specialist the next day.

Stroke symptoms can vary and because of that, it's important to recognize the clinical signs and to have your family members recognize clinical signs.

Something told me to look up, and I can’t explain what told me, but something told me to look up what are the symptoms for stroke. Med MD, WebMD, something like that, popped up and it had 10 signs of strokes and I had six of them.

Miss Watley was initially evaluated by our stroke service which takes care of the entire Premier system. She was seen at Miami Valley South in our emergency room there. The stroke team evaluated her and identified that her vision loss in the right eye was a warning sign for a potential problem with the artery in the neck. Thankfully, she was okay at this stage and not having any further outward symptoms which allowed us to transfer us to the main hospital for further work up involving looking at the arteries, which are only repaired here at Miami Valley.

My doctor, you know, they got a team, Dr. Ludwig and his team. I had the whole team. Them doctors come in my room and did all kinds of good stuff, tell me all kinds of stuff, and they were very concerned about me.

Mini strokes or TIA's are an important category for us to capture and take seriously. What we mean by capture is usually bring the patient in for at least some observation in the hospital and that allows us time to order tests and do things that look for the source of the problem. That alone can prevent, sometimes, the larger stroke from very occurring. I think in Miss Watley's case, we were fortunate because her symptoms of right eye vision and some of the numbness that she was experiencing helped us determine that the particular artery that was narrowed was the culprit.

We have found that it's safer to work with stents and balloons in someone who has disease on both sides of the neck and she had it in both right and left as it turned out. We knew that puts her at a very high risk for having further stroke and it actually puts her at a high risk for having certain surgical procedures, which led her only into one path, which balloon and stenting seemed to be the best case for her.

There are two ways to repair arteries that are narrowed such as hers, one would be open surgical technique and the other would be an endovascular technique where balloons and stents are used.

Right after surgery, they were cleaning me up, getting me ready to go into the intensive care unit because they have to do that because of medicine reasons. I noticed a big difference in my eyes. I could see without glasses.

Once we opened the artery and returned blood supply, she noticed that her vision improved. Although this is not exactly typical for our cases, it is important to note that that means the profusion or the blood supply to the brain, and specifically to the eye, had been improved and we were thankful that she did so well with that.

I've got more energy than I did ever. I feel like I'm young again. I know I'm not but I feel it. It's just you're full of joy. It's so remarkable.

Miami Valley Hospital is a comprehensive stroke center, which is important because it puts us into a category that have been evaluated by the Joint Commission. The Joint Commission uses very specific guidelines and standards in which to grade us and to ensure that we have the quality that you would want and expect out of a top 100 center. Centers that participate in the same process are Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Mass General, Stanford, all of the big names that you would expect with medical quality and care participate just like we do in this process and grade themselves against us and us against them and we find that our standards are just as high as theirs which we're very proud of. We like to make sure that folks in Dayton know that. That this is the one and only one place you can get that type of care.

I've been to several different hospitals around Dayton and I won't name them. Everybody knows the hospitals around Dayton. This is the most caring and they take such good care of me that since I've been out, I've already had two of my friends getting their arteries checked.

We had our follow up visit, she and I, and I was able to evaluate carotid ultrasounds of her neck, the stents are both wide open, they look very happy which means the arteries are happy, which means the brain is happy and it's got enough blood supply. So, I think her prognosis is excellent. I think these stents will be lifelong for her, they won't give her any further issues. But we'll continue to monitor and watch her closely in clinic to make sure that that's the case.

Dr. Ludwig when he did my surgery, you give me a reason to live now instead of worrying about dying. I ask him today, he said, hey, do what you want. You don't have no restrictions. Your life is yours.