Family grateful loved one survived stroke during pandemic; calls it a miracle
Published 6:00 pm Sunday, April 19, 2020
Special to the American Press
Marcie Allen Dobbs was on the phone with her husband Chris on Tuesday morning when she realized something was horribly wrong because he wasn’t making sense. She immediately thought he was having a heart attack or stroke.
“He was slurring his words but he was able to say enough that I could pick out, ‘I need help!’ And that was when I screeched, ‘You’re having a heart attack or stroke. I’m hanging up to call 911. Wait for the ambulance!’ ”
She called 911, and rushed from her home in Dry Creek to her husband’s office at Tower Loan in DeRidder, a distance of about 20 miles. He had been working alone at his office so there was nobody there to help him. When his wife got there, an ambulance was arriving and paramedics made their way to Chris.
“His speech was waning in and out and his blood pressure was through the roof,” she said. “They loaded him into an ambulance and called the stroke hotline which instructed them that the nearest hospital with a neurosurgeon on staff and equipped for stroke treatment was Christus St. Pat in Lake Charles and that’s a 60-mile drive from DeRidder.”
The paramedics headed south on U.S. 171 with her husband’s life hanging in the balance.
Special to the American Press
A helicopter met them just outside DeRidder city limits, and Chris was airlifted to Christus Ochsner St. Patrick Hospital. She was not able to go in the helicopter or be inside the hospital with her husband because of precautions related to the pandemic.
But that didn’t stop her from heading to the hospital so she could at least be closer to her husband and ready to hear updates as they came her way.
“The helicopter flight only took 10 minutes but Chris was not considered stabilized until he got to the hospital,” she said.
But he was far from out of the woods at that point. “Once inside the emergency room, he was able to call me from his cell phone and he had facial drooping on the right side, speech was terribly slurred and no right side body movement,” she said.
Chris and Marcie Dobbs have been married for 14 years and have two children, a daughter, Analise, 8, and a son, Rowan, 6.
They live an idyllic life steeped in faith, out in the country on 80 acres, and surrounded by friends and family, including Marcie’s mother, Mary Yeates Allen, who lives with them. Their children spend the days doing things that sweet childhood dreams are made of: fishing, catching frogs, going on outdoor adventures, feeding the animals on their land.
But on Tuesday, when the world stopped for a little while for Marcie Dobbs, that life seemed very far away.
Special to the American Press
“Chris was in hysterics, telling me he was outside the time frame to receive stroke-reversal meds,” she said. “They traced it back and the timeline proved his symptoms actually started at 8:30 a.m. but because he was unable to contact his boss to get someone to come to the office, he stayed at work and assumed it was exhaustion. He was becoming incoherent at that point, also. So, from 8:30 am. to arriving at the hospital at 11:45 a.m., it was too long of a time period to risk the medication.”
She said their nurse, a man named Grant who was caring for Chris at the hospital, and to whom they now refer to as their “hero,” called the doctor and said his speech had completely stopped and symptoms had drastically worsened. Although she said some things are a blur, it was shortly after that when Chris was given the medication. Things can go either way at that point; drastic improvement or a continuing downward spiral.
“Within 22 minutes, I got a call from Chris,” she said. “I honestly thought it was some sort of recording from a previous day because he sounded just like himself. It was unbelievable.”
His recovery had begun. Marcie and Chris Dobbs attribute his survival to a miracle because they know that his story could have turned out very differently and he could have been a statistic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, strokes kill about 140,000 Americans each year and someone in the United States has a stroke every 40 seconds.
“Prayers coincided with every single step of positive progress Chris made after the stroke,” said Marcie Dobbs. “His parents in Lafayette had everyone in the parish praying, his family in Alabama had half the state on their knees, people in DeRidder stopped at his office to pray with his co-workers. I’ve never witnessed such a flood of support. It has been a scary but incredible ride.”
The Dobbs family attends Shiloh Baptist Church and Dry Creek Baptist Church, and she said their churches, along with Dry Creek Bible Church, First Methodist Church of DeRidder and Hopewell Baptist Church, were all extremely supportive during their time of crisis.
How frightening was it to not only go through something like this but to go through it during a pandemic?
“The global pandemic has changed so many things, and being separated from my husband when he needed me most would have been unbearable without the blanket of prayers and support we received as a family from the medical community and our neighbors,” said Marcie Dobbs. “God saw fit to perform a miracle and we will never forget it.”
Throughout the medical emergency, Marcie Dobbs was able to get updates out quickly to family and friends via social media.
On Tuesday, not long after his ordeal began, she posted on Facebook: “Keep the prayers coming, and I’ll update here when I can. I haven’t gotten to lay my eyes on him since they put him in the helicopter this morning but I am fully okay with that because he sounds so incredibly good over the phone. As far as we know, the stroke was blood pressure-related, but they’ve gotten his blood pressure back to a controlled level, and he even got to have some pizza.”
That evening, Chris Dobbs was able to talk to his children by phone before Marcie’s mother tucked them in for the night.
Another update went out on Facebook on Wednesday: “They (medical staff) timed it perfectly so I could sneak into the ambulance bay after he had his MRI! I not only got to see him, but actually got a kiss and hug. My heart is so happy! The staff is doing an amazing job of keeping me informed and their plan is so thorough we both feel huge relief.
Thank you all again for so many prayers and words of comfort. We love you all.”
Marcie Dobbs said this week that she will never forget the moment when she got to see her husband in the ambulance bay: “When I stepped down on the sidewalk, I was waved onto the ambulance and I flew into his arms and sobbed as I soaked up the miracle of him sitting up and speaking to me like himself again.”
During the entire ordeal, she said friends and family in their community and even in other states were praying for them, reaching out to see what they could do to help, and some friends even insisted she trade her sleeping spot in the hospital parking garage for a hotel room that they had already paid for so she could get a little rest.
She posted this on Wednesday: “Well, his Ischemic stroke (artery in the brain becomes blocked) resulted from uncontrolled blood pressure — noncompliant with meds — ya’ll can fuss at him later for that! The lasting effects appear to be minimal at this point. Praise the Lord! From the bottom of my heart, I’m eternally grateful for each behind-the-scenes thoughtful act of kindness. Meals offered, childcare provided, his co-workers insisting he take the needed time off down the road, nurses offering to wheel him to a window so I could wave to him. All of it!”
Chris Dobbs was released from the hospital on Thursday and he and his family have been busy counting their blessings every minute since then.
“My healing was nothing short of a miracle,” he said. “This miracle was His grace. To the first responders, ER staff, my ICU team, all the staff at St. Pat’s, to the tech who wheeled me back out to the car after being discharged, and to everyone in the community; our family, friends, and everyone who prayed. I want to thank everybody for being there for us during this time!”
As for their children, Analise and Rowan are just ready to get back outside with their mom and dad. They have some fishing to do, frogs to catch, animals to feed, and lots more adventures to go on together.
