When Nester Montalvo woke up last September, he knew that something was wrong. He had a headache, and his vision was blurred. The symptoms felt like “actually bad hangover”, but he was not drinking a day earlier. When he tried to stand, the right part of his body was numb.
The 61 -year -old Montalvo said, “Everything started moving. I stood up, and I fell.” “I don’t yet understand what was going on. I could not understand it. I didn’t know why I was feeling so.”
His wife helped him and immediately called 911. Paramedics gave him dangerous news: He was having a stroke. He took him to an emergency room at Mercy Hospital in Catholic Health in Nasau, Long Island. The situation was serious: Montalves said that he heard a doctor telling his daughter, a registered nurse that he had only 15% opportunity to survive.
Montalvo, a police officer of New York City, said, “I am going to die ‘Oh my God, I am not a chance to say goodbye to anyone.”
Nester Montalvo 
“Time is brain”
The head of neurocritical care at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Taylor Kimberly said, “There is a saying among doctors treating strokes:” Time is brain. “Kimberly was not involved in the treatment of Montalvo. Strokes occur when the blood flow in the brain is either blocked or interrupted by a broken blood vessel, Kimberly explained.
Montalvo had an obstruction, or an ischemic stroke. In this type of stroke, cells in the brain lose access to nutrients and oxygen, causing damage. For a long time a stroke becomes untreated, the harm can be as bad, Kimberly said. Nobody knew how long Montalvo was getting stroke, because the symptoms were present when he woke up.
An emergency medicine participating in Mercy Hospital, Dr. Sini Thyil was the first doctor to see Montalvo. He said that “very prominent” were neurological deficit, he said.
“You can see something strange,” Thyil said.
Symptoms triggers the stroke protocol of Mercy Hospital. Within 10 minutes of reaching ER, Montalvo was evaluated as a potential stroke patient. Fifteen minutes later, he was passing through a cat scan. Shortly after the doctors reviewed and honored the scans, Montalvo found a clot-busting drug called TNK, Thyil said. Later, he did another minor procedure to ensure that the clot had gone.
“I could have been a vegetable, I could have died,” said Montalves. “But they saved my life.”
A complex road for recovery
Even though the stroke was treated, the position of Montalvo was important. Their vocal cords collapsed, and required a tracotomy to allow them to breathe. He could not talk or swallow due to tubes, and stroke it then made himself difficult to speak and eat. He could not even swallow a quarter-spoon apple uncontrolled when he met an acute care speech pathologist at Mercy Hospital when he met an acute care speech pathologist Elein Fairchild.
“It was a mess. I couldn’t swallow, I could not talk, I could not eat,” Montalvo recalled.
Nester Montalvo 
For six weeks, Fairchild worked with Montalvo. He received about an hour of speech therapy a day, as well as exercise that targeted muscles around his neck that contributes to eating and swallowing. He scanned regularly to ensure that treatment was working.
After that one and a half months, the Trecotomy tube was removed, allowing fairchild and Montalvo to work more on the ability to eat and speak. He carried out three processes to help muscles around his neck. By thanksgiving, he was able to eat a regular food with his family.
Nester Montalvo 
Now, about a year after its stroke, Montalvo is doing better. He can speak and eat as before, and is enjoying retirement by spending time with his wife, his children, grandson, and his dog, Paris. He still uses a cane to walk and continues to receive a outpatient physical therapy. Montalvo said that he expects to continue his recovery, which he said is difficult to avoid stroke.
“You take life for life, and then when something like this happens, it wakes you up,” Montalvo said. “You hear that people talk about it, and it seems that it is not going to happen to you. Suddenly, it happens to you.”
