In the Stroke of Time
Quick Intervention Gives Oil Worker His Life Back
Chad Pennington sweated profusely as he stood in a church balcony preparing to help his wife photograph a wedding.
|
"I had a very peculiar headache," remembers the rural Doniphan, Mo., man. "I thought he had a bad case of the flu," recalls his wife, Charity. But the situation proved to be far worse. He was suffering from the symptoms of a stroke, although neither he nor his wife realized it at the time.
As Charity stood in the sanctuary of the Logan Creek Baptist Church in Doniphan shooting the wedding on June 30, 2007, she looked up and saw that her husband was nowhere to be seen. She finished shooting the late-afternoon wedding and then went looking for him. Charity found him lying on the fl oor of a bathroom at the rear of the church. "He couldn't respond to me. He couldn't speak to me," she remembers. A church caretaker called 911. "I remember thinking this has got to be really bad," Chad says. |
Chad Pennington shares a special moment with his 5-year-old daughter, Melody.
|
Time is Critical
He was rushed by ambulance to Ripley County Memorial Hospital in Doniphan. An emergency room doctor at the rural hospital told Charity the bad news: Her husband had suffered a stroke caused by bleeding on the right side of the brain and needed emergency surgery.
The doctor put her in touch with Cape Girardeau neurosurgeon Scott R. Gibbs, M.D., of the Brain and NeuroSpine Clinic of Missouri. On the telephone, Dr. Gibbs calmly explained the situation to Charity. "Dr. Gibbs was so thorough on the phone," she says.
Initially, plans were made to fly Chad by helicopter to Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau.
But lightning in the area and an ill pilot made that impossible. So Chad was transported by ambulance. The trip took an agonizing two hours.
Charity remembers it was late that night before her husband arrived at Southeast.
|
Nine Minutes
Within 17 minutes after being wheeled into Southeast's Emergency Services, Dr. Gibbs was performing surgery.
"He had a very large hemorrhage," recalls Dr. Gibbs. When he exposed the brain, "it just spewed out blood."
"The very next day he was awake," Charity said of her husband. "He knew me." There were a few visible signs that Chad had suffered a stroke. "He had a little bit of a crooked smile and he had a limp," she says. He also experienced some loss of vision.
After a 17-day stay at Southeast, Chad was discharged and received speech and occupational therapy at Southeast's Outpatient Rehab at HealthPoint Plaza for several months.
He no longer walks with a limp and his vision has slowly improved. Seated in the kitchen of his rural Southeast Missouri home near the Arkansas border surrounded by his wife, 3-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter, Chad doesn't look like a man who had suffered a stroke.
Dr. Gibbs says Chad's recovery has been exceptional. "He's young and he has a healthy brain. Chad has every reason to enjoy a long, full life." |
|
Is it Stroke?
ACT F.A.S.T.
FACE
Ask the person to smile. Does one side of the face droop?
ARMS
Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?
SPEECH
Ask the person to repeat a simple sentence. Are the words slurred?
TIME
Call 911! | |
Dr. Gibbs credits the emergency room physician in Ripley County with taking initial steps that helped lessen the impact of the stroke. On the advice of Dr. Gibbs, a breathing tube was placed and Chad's head was elevated. Medication to reduce the swelling in Chad's brain was administered before he ever left the hospital in Doniphan. Dr. Gibbs says every minute counts immediately after a stroke. "Time is brain," he tells patients and their families.
Chad admits he's a lucky man. He felt good enough to go deer hunting last fall.
Chad says Dr. Gibbs and the staff at Southeast Missouri Hospital provided him with first-rate care. "What is nice about Southeast is your questions get answered," he notes.
Chad was 29 at the time of his stroke. Now 30, he's ready to resume his career as a drilling foreman on ocean oil rigs. It's a job that takes him all over the world, from Australia to Africa to Brazil and Singapore.
"We were so lucky," Charity says. "If God was ever with anybody, He was with us."