Lucky Stroke Survivor Was in the Right Place at the Right Time

There is never a good time to suffer a massive stroke but for 35-year-old Meisha McInstosh, RN, it couldn’t have happened in a better place. See how her Baptist Hospital colleagues acted fast to save her life.
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- My name is Meisha Mcintosh. I work on Four Hope, which is a neurological and cardiac step down unit at Baptist Hospital. I live with my mother and my grandmother and my four dogs. I like to rollerblade. I like to hang out with my friends and my mother and my family. I like to hang out with my dogs. Sometimes I take walks with them. They're a very big part of my life. I remember once someone described me as energetic and vibrant, I really like that.
- My name is Monique Sanchez, and I am a registered nurse, and I'm part of the Baptist Emergency Stroke Team here at Baptist Hospital Miami. Everyone works not only for what's best for patients, but for the community, and we look out for one another.
- It was on January 3rd of this year. It was a normal day. I had gone to breakfast. I spoke to my mother on the phone, and then I went to document all my patients. Someone had come to tell me that my patient was trying to get out of bed, and I had gone to assess the situation. And the next thing I know, I woke up on the floor, surrounded by my colleagues.
- When I first saw her, they had brought her into the emergency department. I saw that she was on the wheelchair. I immediately assessed her, just from what I could see, but from what I could tell, it did look like she was having a stroke.
- As we know very well, when you're dealing with stroke, time is of essence. The sooner and the faster you treat it, the best chance of you having a good outcome.
- [Monique] I was the one that spoke with Dr. Dabus. I was able to give him report on her story and her case, and let him know what was going on with Meisha.
- [Dr. Dabus] The first thing that we heard of is that we were having a stroke alert. So basically, when a patient is suffering a stroke, you know there's a code that is activated, and the whole team goes there and starts assessment the patient.
- Honestly, I think I was at the right place at the right time. If my coworkers didn't recognize my symptoms, things would've been completely different. So I'm very lucky.
- What Meisha had is something that we call a large vessel occlusion. The best treatment available for you is a procedure called mechanical thrombectomy. We go with a little catheter through your groin, and we navigate this catheter very fast, all the way from the groin to inside the brain, where the vessel is blocked. So there's different techniques that we can use to open the vessel. And in general, if everything goes well, this procedure is extremely fast, and able to recannulize the vessel within like 10, 15 minutes after we start. In case of Meisha, you could see the results were almost immediate. As soon as the procedure was done and we start to lighten sedation, we could see that she was moving. She was following commands, meaning she was understanding, which she was not doing before. And as soon as she was extubated, her speech was basically almost back to normal.
- I think that Baptist is a great place to come for stroke care, before, after, in the immediate time that you're having the stroke, because it's a comprehensive stroke center. They have all the tools that you need to help recover properly.
- Meisha's doing amazing. She is truly a success story. When it comes to stroke, we're truly second to none here in the Miami-Dade area.
- Baptist has had a very special impact on my life. Them being a comprehensive stroke center pretty much saved my life, and I'm thankful for Baptist. And now I'm able to continue to live a normal life.