(lively guitar music)
- I was teaching my prevention program
in Turner Creek Elementary.
Sitting in the lunch room and talking with the kids
and all of a sudden, it sounded like the fire alarm
was going off, just kind of like the strong buzzing sound,
like a building fire alarm, started to look around,
all the kids were acting as normal,
talking and having fun in the classroom
and I started kind of getting a little lightheaded
and realizing that it was something going on with me.
I sat down at the table and kind of black and white flash,
kind of like you are going to pass out,
type lightheaded feeling and I had some weird feeling
down my left side and I wasn't sure what's going on,
so I grab one of the lunch ladies
and I told her: "I need you to help me get out of here
and get me to the nurse's office."
I couldn't walk any further, I just kind of went down
there in the hallway.
- When I saw Scott lying there,
I said something to him about
"Scott, this is nurse Cindy, what's going on?"
And he said, tried to talk to me at the time
and it was slurred, he was not able to enunciate.
- Never lost consciousness at all,
the school nurse came out and as soon as she looked at me,
she's like: "You're having a stroke."
No, I'm not, I'm 38 years old, getting ready to turn 39,
I was like: "No, I'm not."
- As soon as that happened and they got Scott out
and realized something was going on,
one of the bystanders called 911.
- The call came out for a possible stroke
at the school, an address that we knew,
they told us what school it was
and I knew he was a school resource officer there
at that time, so I told my partner,
I said: "This has to be Scott."
- EMS arrives and the fire department got there,
they started working on me, got in the ambulance,
the medics were assessing me, doing all their, their job.
Asking me a million questions,
asking my name a million times and I knew the medic,
but it was making me mad,
"Fusha, you know my name, quit asking me what it is."
- What's critical that he was able to identify
and the people around him were able to identify the symptoms
because as a result he got in here,
to the emergency room rapidly
and we were able to provide him with therapies
that otherwise he would not have received.
- Ambulance personnel can call ahead
and relate to the hospital personnel an examination
they've performed, they can alert the hospital
that a possible stroke patient is en-route.
That gets the process started at the hospital,
so that when you arrive, they are ready for you.
- This is our clot box, everything we need to treat
acute ischemic stroke is in this box.
We need to have a CAT scan of your head,
and we bring you back and if that CAT scan
indicates that you are not having a hemorrhage,
but indeed are having an acute ischemic stroke,
we will open this box and everything we need
to treat you is in this box.
- Got to the hospital and they rushed me,
and they called for the stroke alert
and got into the hospital, had all the different people
doing everything on me.
- After we've delivered Scott to the hospital
and I stayed there for quite a while,
sometimes when it's a friend, you don't think
everything moves as fast as it should
and in all reality, it does.
- As we take a look at the inside the brain,
and Scott, his stroke occurred basically
in the back part of the brain, roughly in this area here.
Actually, he received a more novel treatment approach
where we take a catheter and we insert it
into a blood-vessel and then take the catheter
and place it right onto the clot inside the brain
and provide the medicine directly onto the clot
and he did very well.
- Slowly I was able to start talking a little bit,
and starting to move around and kind of hear
what was going on.
I was in the E.R or the ICU till that Thursday.
The nurses were coming in and planning to cut me off
from visitors because like, we've had,
and I can't remember how many it was,
that on the first day, it was like a 150 visitors
and like: "You're done."
And then all of a sudden here comes,
you know, people from other other fire departments,
other police departments coming to see me
and they're like: "Can't really say no, they've got guns."
- So when Scott came into the E.R,
we were contacted by the neurology service
that Scott had a problem with one of the blood-vessels
to his brain, so he was brought over to us
as quickly as possible where we began to do first
a generic angiogram, but once we saw the problem,
we quickly put in a catheter where the blod clot was
and then infused the TPA, which is a blood-lysis agent.
We were able to bust up this clot in a very critical vessel
and he had a good outcome from that.
- Doctor Brown, what he means to me,
is my life, it's the second chance, amazing what he did,
when they told me everything, what the procedure was
and very excited to meet him and see what he is like,
to say "Thank you."
- [Scott] How're you doing? - [George] Nice to see you.
- Good to meet you, I've never gotten a chance to see you.
- I've met you once.
- At those moments, I was just waiting for it,
so a huge deal, a big thank you to you.
(lively guitar music)