Ralph Sabatino, April 2023
Stroke survivor / mechanical thrombectomy performed by Dr. David Fiorella.
At 67, Ralph Sabatino thought of himself as typical for his age. His heart doesn’t work perfectly. He has high blood pressure. And his wife says he snores. The day Ralph’s stroke happened was typical, too…until it wasn’t.
It was April 23, 2023. Ralph was working on his laptop in his bedroom. As he rose from the chair, he collapsed and fell to the floor. At first, he thought he’d simply slipped out of the chair. But he couldn’t get up. Thank goodness his sister, who had been visiting, happened to enter the room a minute later and called his wife Claire to the room.
Claire, an RN, noticed Ralph’s left side was paralyzed, and his speech garbled and slurred. She immediately called 9-1-1 and told the dispatcher she thought her husband was having a stroke. Within minutes, a Stony Brook mobile stroke unit was there at their house. From the CT scan taken onboard the mobile stroke unit, doctors at Stony Brook confirmed Ralph had indeed suffered a stroke. He wasn’t bleeding but they saw he had a blood clot in his brain.
“In the five minutes it took to get to the hospital,” said Ralph, “the Stony Brook team had everything ready and a plan in place for Dr. Fiorella to perform a procedure to remove the blockage.” Ninety minutes later, Ralph was in the recovery room.
From Ralph’s perspective, “It was as if nothing happened. I felt exactly the same – great—as before the stroke. I resumed activities immediately. Dr. Fiorella, his team and the mobile stroke unit saved my life.”
