ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) -Was it a miracle? A 20 year old St. Louis woman who wasn’t expected to live after a stroke a year ago, celebrated with a party over the weekend.
A family video of Isabel Wimmer-Brown’s ordeal was shown at the reception Sunday at St. Clare Health Center in Fenton. On the video a doctor is quoted as saying “We’ll just have to wait and see.” That was the first prognosis after Brown was rushed to the St. Clare emergency room July 2, 2011. Blood clots on her brain had caused a stroke. Neurosurgeon Doctor Armond Levy said, “She was, without exaggerating, dying when she hit the door.”
With just minutes to go Dr. Levy tried a second angiogram and delivered more clot busting drug to the brain. He said then there was a surprising improvement. “She was kind of pulled out of the brink, presumably by a higher power than me, and then it was just a matter of staying the course.” Isabel did indeed stay the course and worked extremely hard in therapy and on the one year anniversary of the stroke she got together with her doctors, nurses and staff at St. Clare Health Center for a party to say thank you. Isabel said at the party, It’s fun to see the video again to see how I could do it now and I can do all these things like walking up stairs.” Dr. Levy said, “I’ve seen things you can call border line miraculous before and this is certainly up there among them.”
St. Clare Hospital officials say Isabel is released from official therapy, but she is continuing to do exercises on her own.
