‘LIKE A MIRACLE’
Quick action, cutting-edge procedure gave stroke patient 2nd chance at life
Anise Pettersen roused her 2-year- old son, Brooks, from bed early the morning of July 21.
The Kingston woman had a 7:30 a.m. appointment for her car, and the two of them needed to get a move on.
After dropping her car off, she and her son strolled over to Sunrise Bagels on Albany Avenue for breakfast.
It was, she said in a recent interview, one of the best decisions of her life.
“Before I could even take a bite, a huge alarm went off — like an earthquake warning or a tsunami warning,” said Pettersen, who had just move back to the Hudson Valley from California with her husband, Nick, and their son.
She looked at her son and other patrons in the restaurant, who appeared unfazed by the deafening noise.
Then, she said, “I put my hands over my ears and realized it was me.”
She tried to call her husband but couldn’t make her fingers touch the keypad of her phone.
Realizing something was wrong but not knowing what, Pettersen said she yelled to the other patrons in the store to call 911, then returned her gaze to her little boy and wondered whether it would be the
last time she would see her son’s face.
“I tried to i magine Brooks’ life without me, and I just couldn’t see it,” she recalled. She said she thought to herself, “‘ You’re too young. I don’t even know you yet.’”
Pettersen said she tried to stand, to tell her baby she was sorry, but her legs wouldn’t hold her up and she collapsed on the floor of the bagel shop. She was unable to speak coherently, she couldn’t see out of both eyes at the same time, and a general paralysis had overcome her body.
The 43-year-old woman was having a stroke.
According to the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, someone in the U.S. has a stroke every four seconds, and every four minutes someone dies from a stroke. Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the U.S. and often, as in Pettersen’s case, strikes without warning.
Pettersen was taken by ambulance to HealthAlliance Hospital’s Broadway Campus, a primary stroke center, where doctors administered clot- busting medications before having her airlifted to Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, the only certified comprehensive stroke center in the Hudson Valley.
She was met there by a team of doctors headed by Dr. Fawaz Al-Mufti, Westchester’s director of neuroendovascular and neurological research.
Al-Mufti said that by using advanced imaging, doctors were able to pinpoint the location of the clot in the basilar artery of Pettersen’s brain and, because Pettersen was conscious, were able to use a cutting-edge procedure known as a mechanical thrombectomy to pluck the clot from the recesses of her brain.
“It felt like the worst headache or migraine in the world just being pulled out of your brain,” said Pettersen, who was awake during the procedure. “It was like sucking it out with a straw. I could feel it traveling down into my neck.”
She said immediately after the clot was removed from her brain, her vision returned to normal, she could talk and she could wiggle her toes.
“It was like a miracle,” she said. “I recovered on the table. I was sitting up within 24 hours, and that’s what everyone was amazed about. I was brushing my teeth, living my life.”
It wasn’t until after the procedure was completed, Pettersen said, that she found out she was only one of very few people to undergo the procedure at Westchester Medical Center.
The ability to use the procedure was key, Al-Mufti said, because the basilar artery provides blood flow to that part of the brain that controls consciousness. Had doctors gone the more traditional route, which would have been to put Petersen under anesthesia, there was a chance it would have caused a blockage in the blood vessel in her brain that doctors would have been unable to spot, he said.
“It was instrumental because it was able to allow us to rapidly identify whether or not as we removed the clot it had impacted the consciousness center,” AlMufti said.
“This was a very unique opportunity for us because she was able to describe what she felt as it happened,” the doctor said. “They typically don’t come back to tell us how they felt.
This was incredible.”
Al- Mufti said that a stroke can strike anyone, regardless of age.
“Stroke is the leading cause of death and disability in the United States,” AlMufti said, noting almost 800,000 people in the U.S. have strokes every year.
He said the ability to recognize the signs and symptoms of a stroke and to get quick treatment are important to halt the damage that can be caused.
“It’s almost like a forest fire,” Al-Mufti said. “It starts small and burns a few trees, but if you don’t act quickly, the whole forest will go.”
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Al-Mufti said the acronym BE FAST can be used to identify the signs of a stroke.
• B stands for balance and refers to a person’s inability to maintain balance while walking, or a loss of coordination.
• E stands for eyes and refers to vision changes, such as double vision or loss of vision in one or both eyes.
• F stands for face and refers to drooping or numbness on one side of the face. Smiling makes the droop more apparent. If you think someone is having a stroke, ask them to smile to make the droop more apparent.
• A stands for arms and refers to one arm being weaker or more numb than the other. If an individual is unable to raise both arms or unable to hold them to the count of 10, it could be a sign of a stroke.
• S stands for speech and refers to changes in speech, including the inability to repeat a simple sentence without slurring, garbling or speaking nonsensical words, or the inability to respond appropriately.
• T stands for time and refers to the need to act quickly if you suspect you or someone is having a stroke.