Months after suffering a major stroke, Michelle Linekin is doing remarkably well.
“Every day is a little bit better with speech. I’ve learned … all of this speaking again. It was a bit slow at first,” Linekin told Global News.
It was April 25 when Linekin, a family doctor from Penticton, came home from a work meeting.
She grabbed a snack, and when it started dripping out of her mouth, her husband became concerned — even more so when she couldn’t talk back.
“I knew something was terribly wrong,” said Philip Mansfield.
It turned out that a five-centimetre clot was blocking blood flow to her brain, causing a stroke.
“I’m learning to do things again by practicing,” Linekin said. “I couldn’t cut things. I couldn’t stir batter.
“When I got in the water, I wasn’t sure … where do I put my feet again? But it’s coming back.”
The 55-year-old woman is expected to make a full recovery based on a number of factors, which include how quickly she was able to get to Kelowna General Hospital and access what’s called endovascular therapy (ET).
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The procedure allows doctors to remove a clot in the brain, restoring blood flow.
“We use the body’s arteries as sort of the roadway to trace all the way up to the brain and the artery that’s blocked and take out the clot,” said Dr. Aleksander Tkach, medical director for the Interior Health Stroke Network.
Tkach has played a major role in helping enhance stroke care in the region when he arrived in Kelowna four years ago.
“It’s been quite a journey. I think we should be all really proud of it,” said Tkach.
“So when I got here, there was not much. It’s one of the reasons I moved here.”
One of his first tasks was to bring endovascular therapy to Kelowna in an effort to improve outcomes for patients who’ve had major strokes.
“It’s usually the worst strokes. So these are people that almost universally are going to be devastated by their strokes — meaning not going to be able to take care of themselves lifelong,” Tkach said.
Unfortunately, those bleak outcomes were common when ET wasn’t available in the Okanagan, forcing patients to travel hundreds of kilometres for the procedure.
“They would go to Vancouver,” said Tkach. “In reality, a fast transfer time was about six hours, but the brain loses about two million brain cells a minute. And so six hours, very few people would have anything left to save by the time they got there.
“They almost never really benefited from the transfer.”
Stoke-care enhancements also include new transport protocols, which allow patients to bypass their local hospital and be directly sent to Kelowna General Hospital for treatment.
As stroke care in the region expands, Tkach said there’s still one area with room for improvement — but that involves the patients themselves.
“One of the big limiting factors is still the patient, or the victim, understanding the signs and symptoms and calling 911,” Tkach said.
“That’s still a major limitation. People say ‘Oh, it’s not that bad. I’m just going to go to sleep.’ By the time they wake up in the morning, it’s too late. Things like that. So that’s still the biggest thing.”
Tkach said knowing the symptoms of stroke is paramount. They include a drooping face, arm weakness and trouble speaking.
Tkach said those symptoms warrant an immediate call to 911.
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