‘You stay right there, Miss Glenda. We got you’
December 1, 2021
A virtual stroke assessment from Charleston that saved a life right here at home
For Health Information Services specialist Glenda Arbuckle, it started like any other workday. She arrived at her office around 8 a.m. on November 19 and quickly settled into her daily schedule.
An hour later, she took a call from a patient and turned to her computer for the information she needed to answer some questions. It was all routine.
But what happened next was something she never expected. In the split second that followed her turning toward her computer, Glenda could no longer speak. Her arms and legs would move, but she could not utter a sound.
“I couldn’t make anything happen,” she says. “My brain was not functioning.”
About the same time, Lisa Lugo had an inexplicable urge to get up and check on Arbuckle, whose desk in the Beaufort Memorial Medical and Administrative Center is separated from her co-worker’s by a wall.
One look told Lisa to call for help. She knew the signs of stroke.
“You stay right there, Miss Glenda,” she said, her voice level and kind. “We got you.”
Events began to tumble forward rapidly. As luck would have it, Dr. Kurt Gambla was in a meeting down the hall. After a quick assessment, the hospital’s chief medical officer called for an ambulance and briefed the Beaufort Memorial emergency department (ED) on Arbuckle’s condition and imminent arrival.
ED staffers met Arbuckle at the ambulance bay and immediately wheeled her into imaging for a CT scan. They alerted stroke specialists in Charleston to stand by for a virtual assessment, available thanks to the partnership Beaufort Memorial has with the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Health Telestroke Program.
The advanced web-based program gives participating hospitals immediate, around-the-clock access to stroke specialists. Patients with suspected stroke are hooked up to a telemedicine cart that enables specialists to remotely examine them and their brain imaging studies to determine the best care options.
The Beaufort Memorial-MUSC Health partnership has helped to earn Beaufort Memorial certification for primary stroke from The Joint Commission and awards for stroke care from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association.
To assess your risk of stroke, schedule a complete vascular screening package.
Good News
Soon after her scan and specialist evaluation came the good news: Arbuckle was a candidate for tPA — or tissue plasminogen activator, widely known as the “clot buster” — and the drug was administered immediately through an IV line in her arm. Her devoted husband, Marion, also chaplain at Beaufort Memorial, never left her side.
Then came the better news: “It wasn’t long before I could talk some,” she says, “and by that evening, my speech had pretty much come back.”
In keeping with stroke protocol, she was moved to the intensive care unit (ICU) for observation expecting that 24 hours later she’d be downgraded to a regular patient room and scheduled for occupational, speech and physical therapy.
Luckily, none of it was necessary. Arbuckle’s recovery went so well, she was discharged the next day directly from ICU, something so rare that her nurse had to look up the unit’s discharge procedures.
Once home, the 65-year-old was exhausted. Thanksgiving, “a very big occasion” at the Arbuckle house, was the following week, so she turned over the preparations to her daughter without complaint.
“The turkey’s in the freezer,” she told her daughter. “Go to it.”
Two weeks after her stroke and back at work, Arbuckle reflected on the experience with gratitude.
“The care was excellent,” says the quiet mother of three and grandmother of four. “I felt very comfortable from the very beginning. Everyone knew what they had to do.”
It goes without saying that she’s especially grateful to Lugo, her co-worker and friend, whose powerful intuition and quick action contributed significantly to her positive outcome.
Now the Arbuckles are back to doing what they most enjoy: grabbing a cup of coffee at Waterfront Park and watching the world go by from the swings.
“He calls me his Baywatch Babe,” she says with a smile.