Barbara Weese
“I focus on living. I’m a doer, not a dweller. I’m very healthy other than these little buggers,” says Barbara Weese, whose attitude shines through in how she lives with a history of strokes. In 1998, Weese suffered a TIA (transient ischemic attack), a small stroke. Nine years later, she suffered a stroke behind her left eye. “A brain scan showed my brain was covered with all these little clots.”
Several years ago, the 71-year-old Weese was diagnosed with a Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO), a heart defect found in one of five people. PFO’s—essentially a hole in the heart—cause strokes in a small percentage of the people with this defect, according to Dr. Andrew Michaels, the interventional cardiologist who cared for Weese.
“A PFO does not cause a problem in most patients, but some who are prone to blood clotting can have a clot go through the PFO to the brain and cause a stroke,” explains Michaels. Weese’s treatment options were long-term blood-thinning therapy or, because she had experienced recurrent strokes, closing the PFO in her heart. “This is a commonly performed procedure in highly selected patients—those who have had a stroke before, with the goal of lowering the risk of another stroke,” says Michaels. In most patients, a PFO will never cause a problem and it’s estimated that 20 percent of the population has this heart defect.
Closing a PFO involves permanently implanting a double-disk device in the heart. “It opens up like an umbrella and then tissue grows around it and keeps it in place,” explains Weese, who remained awake and talking throughout the 45-minute procedure. “I was told most people sleep through it, but not me,” she says, noting that the procedure was not painful. To implant the device, Michaels and his colleagues threaded a tube through a vein from the groin up to Weese’s heart.
“Dr. Michaels was really good at explaining every step prior to, during, and after the procedure. He kept saying, ‘You’ve got the heart of a 30-year old.’ Maybe this is why I like him so much,” says Weese with a girlish giggle. Within a day of the procedure, Weese was back to her “doer” lifestyle, soon walking three miles a day and keeping up with her 28 grandchildren.
