Revelation
County judge says he suffers no effects, plans to run again
County Judge Ed Emmett reveals he suffered a minor stroke days before Hurricane Harvey hit.
Almost two weeks before Hurricane Harvey walloped the Houston area, Harris County Judge Ed Emmett was driving and talking on the phone about the county’s legislative priorities when his vision began to skew.
A few hours later, he was being helicoptered to Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston after suffering a minor stroke.
In an interview Wednesday, Emmett said the stroke did not physically impair him, even as he worked around the clock not even two weeks later, coordinating the county’s response to the record-breaking storm that flooded thousands of area homes and left about 80 dead across Texas.
“Through the whole thing, physically I felt fine,” Emmett said.
The 68-year-old Republican, who was appointed county judge in early 2007 after the resignation of Robert Eckels, then won election in 2008 to serve the remainder of the term, still plans to seek re-election next year.
Emmett said he was driving to Victoria on Aug. 15 when he first began noticing the symptoms.
“At that time, I was seeing double but it wasn’t just straight double,” he said. “Everything was at an angle.”
Flown back to Houston
Thinking the symptoms were heat related, he pulled over, drank a Gatorade and then continued on to Victoria, where he was taken to a local emergency room.
There, Emmett said a doctor concluded that he had a microvascular ischemia, or a blood clot that blocked a small blood vessel in his brain. Emmett was given a drug that removed the clot, and then flown in a helicopter to Memorial Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center.
There he got an MRI before being discharged the next day.
“Next day I was seeing fine and was back home,” Emmett said. “Through the whole thing, I never felt bad, physically.”
When Harvey hit 10 days later, despite sleeping only 11 hours over the next six nights, Emmett said he did not experience any adverse physical effects. The judge said he checked in with his doctor every day and routinely had his blood pressure taken.
Thomas Kent, professor and director of stroke research and education at Baylor College of Medicine, said there is no identifiable cause for microvascular ischemia in many patients. He said that if the ischemia is not recurrent, it is not clear that it could have any severe long-term impacts.
“They just seem to happen,” said Kent, who is chief of neurology at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center. “It may be part of aging. It may occur for a genetic reason.”
Cause unknown
He said every person who experiences an ischemia should get checked out by doctors, noting it could indicate more severe problems, such as hypertension or diabetes.
Emmett said he is not diabetic and does not have hypertension. He added that his doctors are not sure what precipitated the stroke, and tests confirmed that he is in good health. He said doctors said he does not have any factors to indicate he is at a greater risk for stroke.
Emmett said had he been at home, he might not have thought to go to the hospital based on his symptoms.
“It makes you wonder how many people have similar things and just don’t get the treatment I did,” he said. “I’m the first to confess, if I’d been at home, I wouldn’t have done it that way. I have no indicators to tell me I’m even a candidate for this.”