The following story is about our very own FreeGirl Envoy, Paula Brewer. She is an inspiration to us all!
From Boca Raton Magazine
by Kevin Kaminski
Paula Brewer
Just one piece of encouraging news. That’s all Paula Brewer wanted to hear from her neurologist in October 2008. Hadn’t she earned it? Wasn’t it enough to survive one life-threatening episode two months earlier that brought her neurosurgeon to tears—and another, only a week later, that required a pre-eminent cardiovascular surgeon to remove something he had never seen in 28 years of open-heart procedures?
Apparently not. The neurologist looked at the Wellington resident sitting before him in a wheelchair and suggested that she consider another line of work. He didn’t see Brewer ever regaining the mobility needed to resume her career as a dental hygienist.
“I left in tears,” she says. “My one goal was to return to that office and do this to him.” Brewer defiantly raises her left middle finger.
Believe it or not, this is an encouraging piece of news. Last October, Brewer couldn’t move her middle finger—or much of anything on the left side of her body. She remained partially paralyzed, the result of a stroke that touched off a chain of events best summed up by Brewer’s then-boyfriend, Foy Jenkins. “She had one foot at death’s door,” he says, “and the other one on a banana peel.”
Nothing in Brewer’s family history or lifestyle suggested that the reason she fell in the shower while reaching for a towel on the morning of Aug. 6, 2008, was a stroke. She was 39, worked out regularly, didn’t smoke and loved the outdoors. But a CAT scan at a local hospital revealed a blood clot on the right side of her brain.
The neurosurgeon on call attempted to restore blood flow with a Merci Retriever, a corkscrew-like wire used to extract clots from arteries. Not only was the device unable to snag the elusive clot, the Retriever nicked the wall of Brewer’s carotid artery during the procedure.
“My sister told me that [the neurosurgeon] was crying,” Brewer says. “He told her that he was sorry—and that I may bleed to death.”
In truth, the clot had been maneuvered just enough to allow sufficient blood flow, which likely prevented permanent paralysis. Meanwhile, the nicked artery would heal on its own, and, a week later, Brewer was transferred to Bethesda’s Cornell Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine in Boynton Beach.
Ten days after suffering the stroke, Brewer was working with a physical therapist to restore movement along her left side when suddenly her breathing became labored and her blood pressure dropped. Jenkins, an emergency medical services captain with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, suggested to the rehab physician that his girlfriend might have a pulmonary embolism.
Jenkins was right. Brewer had gone into cardiogenic shock, the result of clots that were damming up her vascular system. She was drowning in the blood pooling in her lungs, and her organs were shutting down. The clock was ticking.
“Most people die before they get to the operating room,” Jenkins says. “I told her family that they needed to say whatever they were going to say to her because this might be their last chance. I didn’t think she’d even make it to surgery.”
Once again, Brewer defied expectations. Shortly after midnight, Dr. Michael Carmichael, renowned cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon at Bethesda’s Heart Institute, removed a 12-inch clot—“I’ve never seen a blood clot that big,” he says—from Brewer’s pulmonary artery.
Incredibly, during the surgery, Carmichael discovered the probable cause of her stroke—an atrial septal defect, or a hole in her heart, which likely misdirected the original clot into the artery leading to the brain.
After two full months in the hospital, Brewer was discharged last Oct. 13. Two months later, she walked into her neurologist’s office and shook his hand—with her left hand. Today, she walks with a slight limp and still has dexterity problems that, for now, prevent her from returning to dental hygiene.
But just maybe, Brewer will tell you, she’s not meant to.
“I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, but I’ve accepted that this is a miracle—God’s miracle,” Brewer says. “I shouldn’t be here. He has a plan for me. I just need to find out what it is.”
