Rosemary Harty had won her fair share of Rummikub games against her husband, but never eight in a row. “J.J., aren’t you concentrating?” she teased. John just shrugged. Then she glanced down at the kitchen table and saw him try to pick up the game tiles. The fingers of his left hand wouldn’t close around them, and he was scooting the cup over with his right hand instead. She was out of her chair.
When John heard Rosemary giving their address to the 911 operator, he didn’t protest. An ambulance reached the Hartys’ house in 3 minutes, and by the time they reached SSM DePaul Health Center’s emergency department, he was having trouble speaking and seeing.
Medicine didn’t reverse the stroke’s effects. A large clot was blocking the middle cerebral artery of John’s brain. The emergency staff rushed him over to the angio lab, where Dr. Amer Alshekhlee, a neurologist and neuro-interventionist, used a new device to restore blood flow to the brain before any permanent damage could be done.
The Stryker Trevo Pro Retrieval System surrounds the clot with a wire cage that expands, pressing out against the vessel walls and releasing the dammed blood. The device then compresses the clot and withdraws.
When Alshekhlee finished the procedure, he went over to the waiting room, took out his iPhone, and showed Rosemary before and after photos of her husband’s brain. The dark clump that had been the blood clot was gone.
“Oh, Doctor, you did a miracle,” she exclaimed.
“You got him here in time,” he reminded her.
Three days later, John, who’s 74 and has a history of heart problems, went home without a bit of damage to his brain.
