She told the EMTs to take her an hour away: Stroke and tPA

Dr. Diana Fite, a 52-year-old emergency medicine doctor in Houston, knew her blood pressure had been dangerously high for five years. But she convinced herself her actual blood pressure was lower and healthier. And she thought she was too young to take medicine; she would worry about high blood pressure when she got older.

Then, one morning while driving, her whole right side felt weak. She "had no strength whatever in the hand that was holding the wheel. And my right foot was dead. I could not get it off the gas pedal," she recalled. She grabbed the steering wheel with her left hand, and steered into a parking lot. Then she used her left foot to pry her right foot off the gas pedal. She called 911, and spoke with great difficulty. She told the ambulance crew to take her to a hospital an hour away, to a stroke center whose doctors had experience with diagnosing stroke and giving the medicine tPA within the essential three-hour window for it to be effective.

The tPA started to immediately dissolve the blood clot that had caused her stroke. "I had weird spasms as nerves started to work again. An arm would draw up real quick, a leg would tighten up. It hurt so bad I was crying because of the pain. But it was movement, and I knew something was going on," she said.

Now she has completely recovered. She looks back with dismay on her cavalier attitude toward high blood pressure. Now she takes three blood pressure pills, a drug to prevent blood clots and a cholesterol-lowering drug, and plans do so daily for the rest of her life.

"Boy, when you go through this, you never want to go through it again. I have been given that precious second chance. I was so blessed."

She was also blessed in being among the 3 – 4% of stroke victims who receive tPA when they should. Many victims wait too long to report their symptoms, and many hospital Emergency Room doctors don’t always diagnose stroke accurately.

Advice: Send this to your friends with high blood pressure.

Read another of our healthy heart stories, or read Gina Kolata’s source story in yesterday’s New York Times.