Dr. Cecilia Luedloff's Stroke Survivor Story
Dr. Cecilia Luedloff, a physician in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Washington Regional, was making breakfast for her kids one morning when a serious stroke at age 43 suddenly left her unable to speak or move her right side.
On the morning of July 15, 2023, Dr. Luedloff says she was in the kitchen and had a headache. “All of a sudden, I felt a sharp pain go from my jaw up into my head. I felt my right arm get heavy and thought something's not right,” she says. Dr. Luedloff went to find her husband to tell him something was wrong, but he only heard slurred speech.
Dr. Luedloff’s husband called 911, and a team of paramedics rushed to their home. “As soon as they got to my house, they sent out a stroke alert which told the team at the hospital to be ready for me,” Luedloff says.
Once she arrived at Washington Regional, the area’s only Comprehensive Stroke Center, Dr. Luedloff recalls Brandi Watson, a nurse practitioner with the stroke program, performing a stroke evaluation and speaking to her. “I remember Brandi told me my husband was there, that he loved me and that he would see me after the surgery, and that they were going to take good care of me,” she says.
Dr. Luedloff was rushed to an interventional neuroradiology suite, where Dr. Mehmet Akdol performed a thrombectomy, a minimally invasive procedure to remove the blood clot from her brain. During a thrombectomy, doctors insert a small catheter through an artery in the patient’s groin and thread it up to the blocked blood vessel in the brain. A small device then removes the clot, restoring blood flow to the brain. Dr. Luedloff says when she woke up after the procedure, she was immediately able to respond to the nurse and move her right arm.
“Prior to having my stroke, I knew that Washington Regional was the number one stroke hospital in Northwest Arkansas, but that was the extent of my knowledge regarding our capabilities. I had no idea about the stroke alert system that they had set up, which is essentially what I feel like saved my life and saved my function,” Dr. Luedloff says.
Dr. Luedloff says she is grateful that she came to Washington Regional when her stroke occurred. “When you have a stroke, every single minute counts. I had the thrombectomy less than an hour from when I had my stroke, and that is the reason that I was able to regain function, because Dr. Akdol was able to remove those clots so quickly. If I had to go elsewhere, I would not have had the outcome I had,” she says.
A year after her stroke, Dr. Luedloff has regained nearly all functions after the thrombectomy. “I attribute the fact that I can hug my kids, kiss them good night and tell them I love them - that is all to Dr. Akdol, Brandi and the firefighters and the paramedics that came to my house that morning,” she says.
It's important to know the warning signs of stroke. Remember the acronym BE FAST:
