“She just stopped talking. Her eyes got glassy,” said anesthesiologist, Joel Pavelonis, MD. “She was unresponsive. I knew right away she needed immediate help for a stroke.”

He recalls the moment with a bit of awe. “Twenty years of medicine and I’ve never before actually watched a neurological event like that unfold in front of my eyes,” he said.

Jones remembers the moment, clearly. “I was lying there looking at the doctor when all of a sudden I just couldn’t talk,” she said. “I could think but I couldn’t form the words. I tried to mumble. My right side, my hand, my arm went numb and I couldn’t move.

“Then at the top of my right eye I could see what looked like a gray shield descending,” she said. “The shield was closing down my vision; I was going blind. I thought I was dying.

“Then I heard my nurse yell ‘She’s having a stroke!’ I heard her tell someone that they needed to call my son, and then everything went black.”

Dr. Pavelonis immediately ordered an overhead page for stat neurological assistance. “It was so fortuitous that Dr. Zach was in the hospital,” Dr. Pavelonis said. “He arrived at the patient’s bedside in moments.”

"A large blood clot had closed off her left internal carotid artery, preventing blood flow to the left hemisphere of the patient's brain,” said Victor Zach, MD, one of the few specially trained neuro-intensivists in Arizona.

"Additionally,” Dr. Zach said, “a piece of the blood clot broke off and traveled downstream, clogging up her middle cerebral artery.” This is the blood vessel that supplies blood to the cerebrum, the part of the brain that controls all voluntary actions in the body.

“Dr. Zach told me later I had three strokes in one, the perfect storm, that affected the front, the top and the back of my brain,” Jones said.

“With this situation,” Dr. Zach continued, “Ms. Jones had a 40 to 50 percent chance of dying. Even if she did survive, her chance of being severely disabled was 90 percent.” To expedite treatment, he issued an order for a special clot busting drug that is given to stroke patients whose stroke is caused by a blood clot.

“Her stroke was clinically severe,” Dr. Zach said. “She was completely mute, unable to understand any instructions, paralyzed on the right side of her body and unable to swallow. With the assistance of Pat Jordan, RN, our wonderful charge nurse from the ICU, we were able to administer the initial dose of clot busting medication just 40 minutes after the onset of the stroke.”