糖心vlog anchor Laura Terrell shares husband's story of recovery after two strokes
Shawn Terrell almost died in 2023 after suffering a massive stroke. Now he hopes his story saves lives.
Shawn Terrell almost died in 2023 after suffering a massive stroke. Now he hopes his story saves lives.
Shawn Terrell almost died in 2023 after suffering a massive stroke. Now he hopes his story saves lives.
糖心vlog Anchor Laura Terrell has shared hundreds of stories over the years, but this one is the most personal.
Laura's husband, Shawn, suffered two strokes in 2023. The second stroke almost took his life. Now the Terrells are sharing what happened to raise awareness about the signs and symptoms of stroke.
Shawn is an avid cyclist and athlete who loves riding his bike on Iowa's many bike trails. On June 2, 2023, Shawn and Laura planned to go for a bike ride together. However, Shawn woke up that day with double vision.
"I remember trying to look at myself and my eyes in the mirror, and I couldn't look at myself in the mirror and see both eyes looking back at me. That was kind of when I realized that one of my eyes was out of alignment," Shawn said.
A trip to urgent care ended with medical staff telling Shawn he needed to go to the Emergency Room.
"I remember the ER doctor saying that you had a small stroke," Shawn said.
Doctors said the small stroke was caused by a tear in an artery in Shawn's neck known as an arterial dissection. Shawn had no idea it was there.
"What I have been told is that it is not uncommon for someone to experience that. They usually heal themselves on their own in a short amount of time, but they can sometimes cause blood to clot as they're healing, and in my case, it caused a blood clot 鈥 a pretty big one," Shawn said.
Shawn's double vision was the first sign something was wrong. He spent three days at the University of Iowa Health Care, where doctors monitored him. He was then sent home. Doctors said healing would take time, and his vision would hopefully improve over the course of several months.
"That was a huge shock to my system to not be able to see. To not be able to drive. I was training for RAGBRAI for the first time and was disappointed about how long it was going to take for my eyes to come back," Shawn said.
After returning home, Shawn and Laura thought the worst was behind them. They had no idea the worst was yet to come.
"I had this burning in my head," Shawn said.
Six days after the first small stroke, Shawn woke up with a terrible headache. He quickly realized that he was losing feeling in his right side and losing his ability to talk.
"I was on the ground. My wife was in the other room and she came in because she heard me yelling. She knew pretty quickly that I was having another stroke," Shawn said. "I started to feel myself fading is the best way to describe it. I started to get more and more numb on my right side. I think I started to feel my throat ... close up a little bit and start to lose my ability to talk."
Shawn was gasping for air as Laura dialed 911. Paramedics arrived within minutes and told Laura they were taking Shawn to MercyOne Medical Center in Des Moines.
"I really started not being able to breathe, and I couldn't talk, but I was trying to sort of make eye contact with the two paramedics to let them know that I couldn't talk," Shawn said. "I remember them intubating me in the ambulance in our driveway, and that's the last thing I remember for several hours."
Paramedics told Laura to ride in the front seat of the ambulance while they worked on Shawn in the back. She says the 20-minute ambulance ride felt unbearable.
"When they got to the hospital, my wife didn't know whether I was alive or dead in the back of the ambulance," Shawn said.
'Miraculous' surgery saves Shawn's life
In the MercyOne emergency room, scans revealed Shawn had a blood clot blocking the main artery in the back of his brain.
"It (the blood clot) was in probably the most important vessel of the human body. The basilar artery supplies the brain stem, and when that completely occludes, it's more or less a death sentence," Dr. Alan McDaniel said.
McDaniel was there that day and explained to Laura the only way to save Shawn's life was to remove the clot with an emergency procedure called a thrombectomy. The procedure uses a specialized catheter, which is guided through the artery to the clot to remove it mechanically.
"I think it's a miraculous procedure," McDaniel said.
MercyOne is the only hospital in Central Iowa where patients can receive a thrombectomy. McDaniel and Dr. Ryan Cook, both interventional radiologists at MercyOne, are the only two doctors who can perform the procedure in Central Iowa.
Shawn's thrombectomy took 20 minutes, and McDaniel delivered the news to Laura that it was successful. However, at that point, it was unclear how much brain damage Shawn had endured.
Since 2017, McDaniel has performed close to 1,000 thrombectomies. He says he can get a clot about five out of every six times. The procedure, he says, has proven to be a game changer in treating stroke patients since 2015.
"In the past, when you had a stroke, it was a devastating event. The treatments were very limited. They would put you on a blood thinner and hope you did well over time. But more recently now, when you are able to get in there and remove the clot, we have many patients that return to essentially normal function. What used to be a devastating end event has become a treatable disease," McDaniel said.
BE FAST: Time is critical for stroke patients
McDaniel emphasizes that time is critical after having a stroke. He says he has seen patients who wait too long to come to the hospital after experiencing symptoms, and it is too late to do a thrombectomy.
"Time is of the essence. The quicker you get here, the more of a chance I have to help you," McDaniel said. "It's the patients that get here after six hours or 12 hours or even 24 hours. Those are the patients that have poor outcomes."
Knowing the symptoms of a stroke can be lifesaving. BE FAST is an acronym to help remember the signs. It stands for balance, eyesight changes, face drooping, arm weakness and speech difficulty. If you experience any of those, it is time to call 911.
"I think people have learned a lot about heart attacks, and they know if you have chest pain that you go to the hospital right away, but I think they don't realize that stroke is a brain attack and you need to get to a hospital right away," McDaniel said.
"Seeking treatment pretty early when you have symptoms is critical to have an outcome 鈥 I always say about my outcome 鈥 it's not that I am unaffected, but I could be catastrophically or severely disabled or dead," Shawn said.
Sharing his story to help others
Shawn is sharing his story now in hopes it will raise awareness about the signs of a stroke and how critical time is in getting to the hospital.
"If it helps one person 鈥 it's amazing," Shawn said.
After Shawn's thrombectomy, doctors told Laura they weren't sure how much brain damage he suffered. She braced for the worst as he was transferred to the neurotrauma unit after the procedure. Hours later, Shawn squeezed Laura's hand.
"I could open my eyes, and everyone seemed very excited and somewhat shocked that I was awake," Shawn said.
Shawn's recovery has not been easy. He still deals with some residual cognitive issues like brain fatigue and information retention.
"I have to read things two or three times to absorb it and process the information. That's part of it," Shawn said. "It is an invisible brain injury, and I think most people don't understand brain injuries unless they've had a brain injury."
Shawn has focused a lot of his energy on his physical recovery, hoping that would help his brain heal. In 2024, he rode more than 240 miles in his first RAGBRAI. His son was able to catch up with him on one of the stops and see him accomplish his goal.
"Having young kids when I had a stroke was both the hardest thing and probably the best thing for my recovery because it gave me something to focus on every day," Shawn said.
McDaniel says seeing his patients go on to live full lives with their families is the most fulfilling part of his career.
"Shawn was a miracle, but I have seen a lot of miracles," McDaniel said.
"This is where I am feeling a little bit emotional," Shawn said. "I am grateful that he cared enough to really pour his heart into learning how to do thrombectomies and doing them well because I think mine turned out about as good as it could turn out."
WATCH: Central Iowa native survives stroke after emergency thrombectomy
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