It’s not how Robert Constantino planned to spend his 72nd birthday. “They started doing cognitive tests,” says Constantino, a stroke victim. Clearly his sense of humor was intact, but Constantino had just suffered a stroke and was waking up after surgery. It all started the night before on Sept. 30. “I felt woozy and I collapsed into the island and cracked my ribs and fell straight to the floor, again I was cognizant of what was going on but I had no strength and no understanding of what was happening. By the grace of god my son comes through the door,” says Constantino.

His son ran and grabbed the neighbor, who happens to be a physician. He called 911 and Constantino was rushed to Delray Medical Center. “He was fortunate because within an hour of having symptoms, he was already in the ER, and in two hours the clot was out of the brain,” says Dr. Dennys Reyes. Reyes says it’s that quick response time that likely saved his life and prevented him from having any permanent neurological damage. “We need to take the clot out right away, in the Neuroangio Suite, we have this X-ray biplane fluoroscopy machine that we can see the vessels and navigate the arteries of the brain and the body just through the groin,” says Reyes.

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