A 71-year-old Chicago-based engineer survives three strokes

John Wagner sure is glad that Kevin didn’t work from home that Friday.

John, 71, had been talking to one of his coworkers at the Norridge manufacturing facility where he’d worked for 20 years when Kevin, a fellow engineer, asked John to join him in his office.

“Kevin said to me, ‘Are you OK, John? You sound like you’ve had about ten drinks,’” John recalled. It was only 7 a.m., and his coworker noticed his speech was slurring. Kevin’s uncle had recently suffered a stroke, so he was familiar with the symptoms and did not hesitate to call an ambulance.

The ambulance took John to Ascension Resurrection’s emergency room, at the time a certified Comprehensive Stroke Center, where he was admitted and stayed overnight. Ascension Resurrection is a certified Primary Stroke Center with stroke specialists who use the latest technology to deliver advanced stroke care for even the most complex cases. 

John thought he’d had a transient ischemic attack (TIA), sometimes described as a “mini-stroke.” But he learned that he’d had an ischemic stroke, which is when the blood supply to the brain is interrupted. It was the first of three he would experience over the next six weeks.

John joked, “In the hospital, I was chided as being a bit of an overachiever. I was told one stroke would have been more than enough.”

Thanks to timely intervention and compassionate care at two Ascension Illinois stroke centers, John survived and recovered from these life-threatening episodes. Now he is taking time to live to the fullest and give back to survivors like him.

If someone you loved had a stroke, would you recognize the signs and know what to do? Visit ascension.org/ILstroke to make sure.

Recurrent ischemic strokes

“I was fortunate to receive the excellent care I did at Ascension Resurrection. I thought they did a terrific job,” John said. “Their empathy was outstanding. I couldn’t have asked for more.”

He’s especially thankful that his care team included Laurie Sabas AGNP-C, ANVP-BC, CNL, CCRN, SCRN. A board-certified advanced neurovascular nurse practitioner, Sabas has cared for stroke patients at Ascension Resurrection for 40 years. And, having cared for her own parents after their strokes, she has a deep understanding for stroke patients’ caregivers, too.

It was Laurie who spotted John’s second stroke when she handed John a cup with medication and noticed him drop it without realizing it. She and her team stabilized John quickly.

“John had a very tight narrowing of one of the arteries in his brain,” Laurie explained. “He was going to keep having recurrent strokes until we fixed it.”

While at Ascension Resurrection, John underwent an intracranial angioplasty, a catheter-based procedure, during which his neurointerventionalist placed a tiny mesh tube called a stent in the affected artery in his head. The stent would keep the artery from narrowing, and keep the blood flowing to his brain. He was also prescribed medication to prevent blood from clotting over the newly placed stent. 

The procedure restored the blood flow to his brain. John went home with detailed care and follow-up instruction but he happened to miss a dose of his antiplatelet medication. This unfortunately caused his third stroke. John fell out of his bed on the night of July 19, 2022, and was rushed to an emergency room close to his home and ultimately transferred to Ascension Alexian Brothers, a certified Comprehensive Stroke Center. 

There, John’s neurointerventional team removed a blood clot from his stent with a procedure known as thrombectomy. John spent the next week at the hospital under observation.

Four months of stroke recovery

According to John, the most challenging part began once he was admitted to Ascension Alexian Brothers Rehabilitation Hospital after his thrombectomy. John had to relearn how to walk, even with a walker. He made progress during his initial therapy sessions at the hospital. Once he had regained his walking ability, he began his outpatient stroke rehabilitation. For the next four months, three days each week, he worked through his regimen of physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. 

John’s therapy improved his speech, balance, fine motor skills and endurance. When he was going through it, though, “every day was a mental and physical challenge.”

Accepting his new limitations was also emotionally challenging for John. A former high school track athlete, the triple stroke survivor now needed an assistive device just to get around the house. He also struggled with his reading. 

“It’s like somebody knocked all the books off of a shelf in my head,” John described. “You have all of this knowledge, but none of it is organized. It is a challenge to retrieve that information quickly. However, the more I read, the more my comprehension improves.”

Nurse Sabas said that John’s anger at himself and stretches of depression were not unusual.

“Stroke patients go through a grieving process, much like people do after a death of a loved one or a cancer diagnosis,” Laurie observed. “They have lost the way they used to eat and live and do things. Having a hard time buttoning their shirt can be enough to bring someone to tears.”

The Ascension Resurrection stroke center helps its patients process this grief in a variety of ways, including yoga, support groups and art therapy; an entire wall is devoted to patients’ artwork. Laurie has also found that it helps her patients to acknowledge their loss rather than tell them they’re “lucky” to not be worse off. 

“I tell people, when you feel overwhelmed, grab yourself a big box of tissues, go in a room, close the door, and just go ahead and unleash,” she said. “And when we’re done, we carry on.” 

John took Laurie’s advice to heart and the small wins started to add up.

“I realize now that each day you will have your wins and there will be losses, too, where you seem to be going backwards. So one day, I made a conscious choice one day to stop using the walker,” said John. “I started walking a few blocks here, a few blocks there, until I eventually worked myself up to three miles per day.” 

His reading comprehension also came back steadily, as did his sense of taste. He still remembers, with visible emotion, the day he was able to lift a heavy pot with his left hand (his weak side) without having to hold it steady with his right.

“It dawned on me, wow, I couldn’t do that three weeks ago,” John said.

John’s proudest moment may have been when he passed Ascension Alexian Brothers Rehabilitation Hospital’s driver’s evaluation on the first try. To complete the two-part evaluation, John had to navigate the one-ways of Elmhurst, Illinois.

“My instructor told me, if you can drive in downtown Elmhurst, you can drive anywhere,” he chuckled.

Giving back to his fellow stroke survivors

If there was one blessing in disguise to all this, according to John’s son, it’s that it inspired John to finally retire.

“I’d been working since I was 13 and had no plans to stop,” John said. “My son knew I was probably never going to stop unless something made me.”

Now that he is feeling well enough to do so, John is traveling and reconnecting with what’s important to him. His first “test” was visiting an old friend in Florida by himself. He and his wife recently enjoyed an 11-day European cruise that included several days of walking around London and other ports of call.

For the past six months, John has spoken regularly to the Ascension Illinois stroke survivor support group. He shares with his fellow survivors and their caregivers what he’s been through: his successes, his challenges, including tips for fall-proofing one’s home and more.

Most importantly, he tries to tell them what he’d needed to hear during those early days of stroke rehabilitation and recovery, when he’d felt so frustrated and scared that another stroke was coming.

“You’re gonna have good days that push you forward. You’re gonna have not so good days” said John. “At times, you’re going to feel exhausted and angry and frustrated. But when you fall down, get up. Push through the pain and pat yourself on the back when you experience even the smallest win. It means you are recovering, slowly but surely.”

If someone you loved had a stroke, would you recognize the signs and know what to do? Visit ascension.org/ILstroke to make sure.