Irving’s Story
My name is Irv. I’m a management consultant. My winter home is in Delray Beach, Florida. Long term I live in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. I’ve been married 55 years. Got three grown children, four grandchildren. I enjoy international travel in the summertime and I spend my winters, you know, here in Florida. In Florida I like to play golf, I like to go to the beach and we participate in a lot of theatrical entertainment that’s available to us.
Last year, I was playing golf at the public course at Kings Point. I was on the 16th hole, drove the ball, went to roll up on the green and when I got to my ball, I was unconscious. Person that I’m playing with realized that there was something wrong, immediately started to scream at me, what’s the matter, what’s the matter? Had a body experience was that I was witnessing what was happening as if I were sitting in a tree watching and wondering why I didn’t get out of the cart to hit my ball. Took another couple minutes and I was on the ground. I don’t know how I got onto the ground. He was screaming for an ambulance. Ambulance found me on the golf course and told me that they thought I was having a stroke.
The ambulance driver got me off the golf course into, the ambulance and informed me through the fog that I was in that he was going to take me to Delray Medical Center, encouraging that Delray of all the hospitals in the area, was particularly prepared to handle stroke victims.
When I met Dr. Mueller, he introduced himself to me as a neurologist, a vascular specialist and an interventionalist. And there was a blood clot in my brain and he was going to get the blood clot out. I know that I had an MRI. They were using fluoroscopic x-rays for live pictures of my brain. Went through my groin, up through my carotid artery into my brain. Told me don’t breathe, don’t talk, don’t move. He said that three times, the third time he said it, he told me to open my eyes and in the palm of his hand was a two by two inch gauze pad which looked like a dead fly. And he told me that he had just removed that blood clot from my brain and the blood flow in my brain started to regenerate, and there was positive flow again. He assured me that I was going to get better because he told me he was effective within two hours of a stroke.
I was in the intensive care unit for three days. At the end of three days, I was discharged. I had to learn how to walk again since I wasn’t able to walk for three days, but, within a week or so, I was, back to almost normal.
I consider myself so fortunate to be at Delray. They have a comprehensive stroke center, they have people like Dr. Mueller.
Well, Dr. Mueller was outstanding. Wouldn’t have gotten the results we had if he didn’t have a team behind him, everything from the ambulance drivers who have been prepped to recognize the symptoms the CAT scan people to recognize if it’s a stroke and give him the pictures they want, the technicians to operate the fluoroscopic equipment so that he’s got a moving picture of my brain as he works, the subsection of intensive care that focused on stroke victims. They all played an important role and they all were the reason for the success I had.
I continue to reflect on the fact that my father’s mother, my grandmother and his sister, my aunt, both had strokes identical to mine. Both of them were younger than I am when they, when they had the stroke. Neither of them spoke again, neither of them walked again and both were dead within a year.
The stroke was 13 months ago. At the time I had the stroke I was grossly overweight which probably participated in my having the stroke. Since then, I’ve lost 75 or 80 pounds. I walk two miles every day and I’ve actually never been in better health.
I live day today knowing that I went through this traumatic event and could have had catastrophic consequences. It makes every day sweeter and happy to be alive, feel in good health and I’m looking forward to the future.
Source: Delray Medical Center