My Stroke of Luck

I was discharged from the Cardiology Dept. of Wojewódzki Szpital Zespolony w Kielcach on December 19, after 9 days in their care, just in time for plummeting temperatures and fresh snowfall. And also in time for the arrival of our daughter’s eagerly awaited visit. After 10 days of recovery at home, we took the train to Krakow, where we spent New Year’s Eve (Sylwester) and part of New Year’s Day before taking the train back to Kielce. Although I didn’t join my wife and our visitors for any sightseeing, I must have strained my heart on the way back home, because I woke up the next morning in the throes of a stroke.

My wife dialed 112 on her Polish phone and soon got a response from an English-speaking dispatcher who sent an ambulance crew to our apartment. Very soon, two sturdy men came in, tested me for stroke symptoms, then got me dressed, tightly grabbed each arm and walked me to the elevator, then out to the ambulance. Acting quickly at the ER, they slathered me with antiseptic povidine-iodine from my thighs to my shoulders to prepare for a mechanical thrombectomy, the optimal treatment for an ischemic stroke if performed within 6 hours. Within 2 hours, the doctors located the clot in the back of my neck, made a small incision in my groin, then threaded catheters through my blood vessels to the clot. A tiny device at the catheter’s tip grabbed the clot and removed it, restoring blood flow in my brain.

I woke up in an intake ward with each patient confined to bed and hooked to monitors that went off frequently for the next 24 hours, as did a few of the patients. During next morning rounds, however, my surgeon came by, tested my coordination, and told me (in English) that they had found the clot and removed it, that it was not in a position to cause lasting damage, and that I would be walking by day’s end. I nearly cried in relief!

Sure enough, later that day an orderly wheeled me in my bed and with my personal effects locker (szafka) into a small room with private WC that included a shower! I had no trouble getting out of my old bedclothes, taking a long hot shower that scratched my terrible rash from the povidine-iodine antiseptic (which took daily injections to clear up), and changing into new bedclothes before anyone else came by.

My wife arrived with new supplies in time to meet the previous occupant and chat in English with his son. The father told me in Polish that he had stayed there 7 days, and added “Gut schlafen!” On my seventh day, I got to meet the next occupant. He was a workaholic builder with his own laptop and cellphone hotspot (and a hole in his heart). We traded notes in macaronic mixtures of Italian & Romanian, Polish and English. (He had a sister in Switzerland who spoke several more languages.) I also mixed some Romanian and Italian with one of the cleaning ladies (from Tuscany), and exchanged a bit of German with one of the technicians who fitted me with a portable 24-hr EKG one day, and a portable 24-hr BP-monitor a day or two later.

The Neurology Complex of Wojewódzki Szpital Zespolony w Kielcach is highly rated. The bulletin board near the nurses station displayed a certificate awarding it an ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System status for 2019 through 2028. It is no coincidence that Holy Cross Voivodship is demographically the oldest in Poland. One of their sonograph technicians thoroughly explored my carotid arteries on their high-quality equipment and said he found no abnormalities. A senior technician later ultrasonically investigated the left atrium of my heart, which used to host a thrombus in situ. He didn’t find anything, so it seems that that thrombus is what broke off, lodged at the base of my neck, and caused my stroke, until it was removed by my surgical team. A miracle!