It’s because of his actions, Louise Doherty says, that she’s still alive.
After holidaying with her husband, Tim, and their son at Ocean Grove, the Shepparton mother was pottering around home clawing back their routine, catching up on chores, getting Michael — who has autism, ADHD and a low-grade intellectual disability — to appointments.
“Then Wednesday morning I woke up and thought, ‘Geez, I’m not feeling too good’,” Mrs Doherty said, explaining she suspected the lightheadedness she had was foretelling a cold or flu.
She continued, making breakfast for herself and Michael, but struggled to finish her coffee before needing to lay back down.
The rest didn’t give her the relief she had expected and as she walked back to the dining room, she fell into a wall, sending several paintings that were hung there crashing to the floor.
“I went to call out to Michael and I had lost all my speech,” Mrs Doherty said.
“I thought, ‘I’m stroking out’. I could feel my mouth droop, I knew I was having a stroke.”
Both a blessing and a curse to be a nurse — especially one who’s worked on the front line with stroke victims — Mrs Doherty knew straight away what was happening, but also knew how detrimental it could be if she didn’t get immediate help.
She said she felt “lucky” to retain control of her limbs and was able to get Mr Doherty’s phone number up on her phone, gesturing it to Michael, who called his father.
“He said, ‘Mum’s sick, Mum’s sick’,” Mrs Doherty said.
She then dialled 000. Michael took the phone, chose ‘ambulance’ from the menu of emergency services and when the operator spoke to him, he repeated “My mum’s sick” and the family’s address over and again.
Mr Doherty, who fortunately works nearby, said despite it being the first time he’d received a call of that nature from his son, he wasn’t aware of how critical the situation was until he arrived home a few minutes later and took over the phone call.
“You don’t think it’s going to be a stroke,” Mr Doherty said.
“They (paramedics) were already on their way.”
While Mr Doherty remained on the phone with the operator, Michael waited in the front yard for the ambulance.
The Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance arrived minutes after Mr Doherty had.
Michael reiterated to paramedics that his mum was sick, led them inside to her and alerted them to the presence of his best friend — a two-year-old golden retriever named Reddy.
“He did really well,” Mrs Doherty said, both proudly and gratefully of her son’s collectedness.
Mrs Doherty said she wasn’t experiencing pain at that point, just dizziness and the frustrating inability to speak.
“In my head, I’m yelling, ‘I need the stroke treatment’,” she said.
“I couldn’t work out my words, but I knew I only had a window to get that treatment to be effective.
“I was writing Ts backward, I couldn’t spell, it made no sense whatsoever, it was just gibberish, and I’m trying to write ‘stroke treatment’.”
Mrs Doherty was transported first to Goulburn Valley Health, where she praised the team’s quick and thorough response.
“GV Health emergency department was fantastic,” she said.
“The team was ready when I went in. I was canulated, sent straight into CT (for scanning) where they spotted the clot on the left-hand side, so they thrombolysed me (the process of breaking up a blood clot), called Melbourne and I was in the ambulance heading to Shepp Airport to be flown to Melbourne.”
Mr Doherty dropped Michael at his parents’ place and organised with a neighbour to mind the pets before making a stressful drive to Melbourne to meet his wife there that Wednesday night.
“In under two hours, I was going through Royal Melbourne ED,” Mrs Doherty said.
After surgery and “every test under the sun”, she said specialists concluded with 99 per cent certainty that a hole in her heart she was born with caused the stroke.
Mrs Doherty will return to Melbourne on February 5 for surgery to close the hole; a procedure her cardiologist is confident will prevent further episodes, along with blood-thinning and cholesterol-controlling medications.
Mrs Doherty was home in Shepparton again by Saturday morning as she awaited her next procedure.
“In a matter of 48 hours, she’s gone from death’s door, an hour from dying, to home — it’s hectic,” Mr Doherty said.
The proud parents, who remain impressed with Michael staying “as cool as a cucumber” throughout the ordeal, had a message for the facilitators of a school program that contributed to his composure.
“St John Ambulance went to the school (Shepparton East Primary School) last year and went through the process of ringing 000; Michael followed the training that he got from school,” Mr Doherty said.
“I want to get in touch with them and let them know what they do has saved at least one life that I know of.”
