Glenn Pritchard held it together, even when the doctor told him his wife might die.
But three hours later, when the neurologist said Gail had survived a devastating stroke, he broke down.
“I just stayed really rock solid when they were explaining everything to me and what the procedure was going to be. I was trying to absorb everything,” he said Friday.
“It wasn’t until Dr. Kristen Attwell-Pope said Gail was speaking, that I let it all out, everything I’d been holding back. It was quite emotional to hear that she’d come out of it.”
What saved Gail from a life of crippling neurological disability is a new blood-clot retrieval procedure called endovascular treatment, or EVT.
Gail, 65, was lucky she had the stroke when she did. A team of neurologists and radiologists at Victoria General Hospital used the last of six stent retrievers to pull a large blood clot from her brain. The radiology department bought the stent retrievers, which cost $10,000 each and can be used only once, in the spring for an EVT pilot project.
Another patient, arriving at the hospital 30 minutes later, had to be flown to the Lower Mainland for the same procedure.
About 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, Glenn, a 67-year-old retired salesman, was in the kitchen of their home in Cook Street Village.
Gail was grinding beans for her morning cup of coffee.
She opened the kitchen cupboard beside him and said something he didn’t quite catch.
“I asked her what she said and she didn’t respond. She kept looking in the cupboard. Finally, I said: ‘Are you talking to me?’ Still no response. And I thought, something’s not right here. I don’t understand.”
Glenn put his hands on her shoulders, gently turned her around and asked Gail what was going on.
She looked blankly at him, rested against the cupboard, then leaned against the stove.
“I said: ‘I don’t understand what’s happening. Tell me what’s going on. Speak.’ ”
Gail said nothing and started to slouch.
“I helped lower her to the floor as she was starting to melt, so to speak.”
Glenn called 911. Within two minutes, he heard sirens.
Paramedics transported Gail to Victoria General Hospital, where she was found to have a blockage in one of the large vessels in her brain.
When Gail arrived at the hospital, she couldn’t speak and couldn’t move the right side of her body, Glenn said.
The team worked quickly, assessing her condition, then guided the stent retriever to capture the blood clot in her brain.
The process took about 40 minutes.
“She had gone from flickering eyes, rigid arm on the right side and a little bit of twitching in the rest of her body and that was it. She was not able to talk or communicate at all. To go from that at 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 when Dr. Attwell-Pope said she was speaking was unbelievable,” he said.
When Glenn saw Gail after the procedure, she was able to say a couple of words.
“She would smile and giggle, as if to say: ‘I can’t get the words out.’ ”
By Thursday morning, she was speaking. On Thursday night, they walked down the hospital hallway together.
“I took her down to the end of the sixth floor to see the full moon. She just said: ‘Wow.’ It’s really quite an amazing recovery.”
Glenn believes the stars lined up to save Gail.
The couple had planned to fly to France for a three-week holiday today.
“We weren’t on a plane. We weren’t in France. I was at home able to call 911. And she got the last stent retriever,” he said. “I want to stand on a corner and tell everyone my story.”
On Thursday, Island Health said it has bought 10 more stent retrievers.
