Instead of taking May 4 off from work, David Ellis decided to pick up a shift at SSM St. Joseph Hospital West in Lake Saint Louis.
A respiratory therapist for 42 years, Ellis works at SSM St. Joseph Health Center in St. Charles but said he picked up the shift at Hospital West so he could familiarize himself with its staff and procedures.
After starting his shift that day, Ellis ran into a co-worker he wasn't expecting to see. During their conversation, Ellis said he started to lose track of what she was saying.
"It scared the hell out of me," Ellis, 65, said Friday from his home in House Springs. "She was calmly talking to me and finally realized I wasn't holding up my end of the conversation. I couldn't remember anybody's name or couldn't follow the conversation, and I tried to speak at some point and attempted to tell her I was having trouble. I barely knew I was even there at the hospital. I never had anything like that happen to me in the past."
The doctor who examined Ellis in the emergency room determined he had a stroke and gave him TPA (Tissue Plasminogen Activator), a clot buster. Ellis then had a CT scan, MRI and several other tests. He spent the next nine days in the hospital.
Eighty percent of all strokes are caused by clots in the brain, said Cynthia Grant, stroke coordinator at Hospital West. The longer a clot sits on the brain, the more damage it can cause. Lacking oxygen, brain tissue starts to die.
"In David's case, he didn't come by ambulance, so we automatically went into code stroke, an alert or heads up where the stroke team is notified by pager," Grant said.
During his stay in the hospital, Ellis was given Coumadin to dissolve a blood clot in the left ventricle of his heart. Ellis said doctors told him the clot could have caused his stroke, because the heart wasn't pumping blood the way it should have.
In 2006, Ellis underwent bypass surgery following a heart attack. The heart attack caused damage to his heart muscle so it doesn't pump as strongly as it should.
A stroke is a heart attack that happens in the brain, Grant said. Risk factors include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, lack of exercise, obesity and sleep apnea. Strokes occur more often in men than women, and African-Americans are at greater risk than other races.
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Stroke victim picks a good day to go to work