MERRILLVILLE | After walking upstairs from the laundry room one day in March, Harriet Miles stood in her kitchen, and her whole side grew weak and numb.
I remember falling to the floor, she said.
A day or two later, she woke up in a hospital room, paralyzed on her right side. The 31-year-old Gary resident did not recognize anyone and did not know how to write or walk.
I barely knew how to talk, she said.
Unbeknownst to her, emergency responders had taken Miles to Methodist Hospitals Northlake campus in Gary, where doctors suspected she was having a stroke.
She did not respond to the standard treatment called IV tPA.
Because her boyfriend called 911 so quickly after she fell, Miles was still within the six- to eight-hour window in which doctors could treat her with new technology.
She was transferred to the Southlake campus in Merrillville, where Dr. Mayumi Oka, a neurointerventional radiologist, used a tool called Trevo to pull the blood clot from her brain. It was FDA approved in August, and Methodist Hospitals acquired the Trevo over the winter, she said.
Her stroke scale score went down to almost zero in one day, Oka said. It was very nice. Sometimes we open a vessel, but the patient doesn't improve much.
Dr. Sanjeev Maniar, a neurologist and director of the stroke program at Methodist Hospitals, said recognizing the signs early is key, and people don't have to leave the area for high-tech care.
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New stroke treatment saves Gary woman