In mid-October last year, 75-year-old Audrey Svendsen was outside gardening with her husband when she suffered a stroke. She remembers the experience, feeling barely able to talk and struggling to get her body to move as she tried to walk back inside.
Her husband recognized the signs of a stroke—Audrey’s drooping face and inability to speak—and called 911 right away.
Audrey was stabilized at a local hospital where she received a clot busting drug that provided some immediate relief her symptoms. But Audrey needed more advanced treatment and she was quickly transferred to Aurora BayCare.
There, Dr. Gerald Eckardt, a cerebrovascular neurosurgeon at Aurora BayCare, performed an intricate cerebrovascular surgery to reach the clot and remove it. To do so he inserted a long flexible tube called a catheter into Audrey’s groin, threaded it up to the affected artery in her brain.
This successful lifesaving procedure allowed Audrey the ability to speak again and resume many of the activities she enjoyed prior to suffering the attack.
In Northeast Wisconsin, this procedure is only available at Aurora BayCare Medical Center, thanks to our neurointervention team of specialists at our certified Comprehensive Stroke Center.
Audrey had no previous warning signs of a stroke and no family history of the condition. Thanks to the care of Dr. Eckardt, she is doing well. Of her experience at Aurora BayCare she says, “It was wonderful. I couldn’t have gotten more attention anywhere else.”