Peter Horvath Peter's Stroke Saga

Welcome BACK to Peter's CaringBridge website. 
This story started in Jan 2021, but continues on June 22, 2023 which happened to be the first day of the North Creek Farmers Market 2023 season.  Peter had been admitted to the hospital non-emergently on Tuesday June 20 to be restarted on the cardiac medication that needs monitoring.  Fortunately, he did not need another cardioversion this time and only needed telemetry, so he drove himself there and was promised to be discharged in time for the market at 2pm.  He was so desperate to leave the hospital to get to the market, he failed to speak-up when he noticed the new weakness!  Upon getting out of the car at home, his left leg gave out and he fell to the ground.  He called me at the market to come home to help him up off the ground. He had an obvious left-sided new weakness and ambulance was called to return to the hospital.
A CT scan was done that FORTUNATELY did not show any bleeding nor any obvious stroke, but it did show a clot above the carotid bulb on the right.  A MRI today showed two small areas of distal infarct.  Right now he is in Glens Falls hospital and is awaiting a transfer to Albany Med for a neurovascular intervention; specifically to remove that clot in the carotid artery.  Hopefully, no further clot will break off.   The procedure has to wait at least until he is off his Eliquis for 24 hours (midnight now) and can be done within 48-72 hours of the clot formation, so hopefully it will be done before Sunday AM.  All positive energy appreciated!


January 23, 2021 
We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. On Friday night at 10PM Peter had an acute ischemic stroke.  He fell getting out of a hot bath and weakly murmured "I got hot and dizzy".  When I was finally able to get into the bathroom, it was clear he was having an acute neurologic event.  He had a left facial droop with significant left hemiparesis, garbled speech and loss of left visual field vision.  After a snowy ride with Johnsburg EMS, a CT scan at Glens Falls Hospital showed no bleeding but did show evidence of a large clot in the right middle cerebral artery.  By 12:30 AM he had received a dose of the clot busting medicine TPA and was promptly sent by helicopter to Albany Medical Center.  Emma and Vitor drove up from Albany and met me at the hospital. We were able to see him briefly before he was whisked onto the awaiting helicopter. At 2AM he underwent a procedure using a catheter put into his groin that went up into the middle cerebral artery and most of the clot was sucked out.   By9AM re-exam by the neurologist revealed almost complete return of motor function of his left leg and some movement in the left hand/arm which previously had been flaccid.  Apparently his speech is garbled but intelligible and he is making as much sense as he ever does!  I say  "apparently" because due to COVID, he is allowed no visitors.  In this weird COVID time, we are only guaranteed a call from the hospital in the event of something BAD happening, and otherwise we have to call periodically to get updates.  If anyone knows someone who works on the neurology unit (room D320) at AMC, please let me know.  It would be great to have someone "on the inside".  We just dropped off his phone and are looking forward to seeing him ourselves when he catches upon his sleep and contacts us.
We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.