What would it be like to wake up one morning and be unable to speak? For Betty Ann Swiatek, an active golfer and registered nurse, it was terrifying. While her husband was driving her on the Kensington Expressway to another hospital, Betty Ann remembered something a former physician employer once told her?“if anything ever happens to me, take me to ECMC.” Betty Ann strongly suspected she had suffered a stroke and pointed to the medical center.

When Mrs. Swiatek arrived at ECMC she was suffering from extreme hypertension. Her blood pressure was extraordinarily high and medical center doctors worked aggressively to bring it down. An MRI scan revealed that there was no blood vessel blockage but a small stroke-like event had occurred in the part of her brain governing language. Under the direction of Dr. Michael Meyer, the team succeeded in lowering her blood pressure to normal levels and her speech gradually returned over the next few days.