Wednesday night around 11:30 PM we were going up to bed. Linda was carrying our cat and when we got to the bottom of the stairs, she suddenly said, "Something's wrong, I don't feel right.... I can only see half of you". I immediately called 911 and we got her to Flower Hospital ER about 12PM. A big fire truck, lights aflashing arrived first and they called the squad. (Precious minutes lost??) Anyway, to give a strong clot-busting medicine TPA, you have to have no other bleeding anywhere and a Blood Pressure of less than 180!!
Turns out TPA is 40% effective but people who get it within three hours of the stroke have a much better outcome after 3 months or more. Anyway, when we got there her BP was 210. For the next three hours we tried everything to get it down. We max dosed one medicine, tried another, and finally they gave her an intravenous drip with the medicine. Three hours later it was still to high and we talked to the neurologist and we said "If it was us, we would risk the possible bleeding for the long term benefits of TPA". He said "Well, that's your answer." We told the ER doctor and he pushed the TPA into Linda, so we just made it within the 3 hr time limit.
Around 5AM, they moved her to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and Sean and I went home for a couple of hours of sleep.
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