Utah teen recovers as pediatric telestroke care expands

SALT LAKE CITY — Lucy Merrell was getting ready for soccer practice when the headache hit.

"I tried to lie down to let it subside, but it just would not go away," she said. "I was just kinda stumbling along the hallways, trying to find my mom."

Her mom, Melanie, knew something was wrong as soon as she noticed her daughter was having trouble walking and one side of her face was droopy.

"I thought to myself, 'Why am I seeing stroke symptoms? Kids don't have strokes,'" Melanie said.

"She wasn't speaking; wasn't making sense," Lucy's dad, Randy, added.

Lucy was rushed to a local emergency room, where Randy urged doctors to call Primary Children's Hospital. Specialists there guided the local team through exams and imaging, confirming Lucy was having a stroke.

She was then taken to Primary Children's, where surgeons removed two blood clots from her brain. She spent two weeks in the hospital and months in physical, occupational and speech therapy.

"The biggest threat to pediatric stroke is time," said Dr. Lisa Pabst, the director of the pediatric stroke program at Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital. "Every single minute where a part of the brain is not getting blood flow, brain cells are dying — and so that's where every moment matters."

Doctors said Intermountain sees dozens of children each year with new strokes, but symptoms can be missed because they don't always look the same as in adults.

They urge families to remember the acronym BE FAST: balance problems, eye or vision changes, face drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulty and time to call 911. Symptoms in kids can also include headaches and seizures.

"Just get them to that emergency room as quickly as you can," Randy said.

Lucy's stroke happened shortly before Intermountain Children's Health launched its pediatric Telestroke network. Now, the system connects 24 hospitals in Utah and southern Idaho with Pabst and her team at Primary Children's Hospital.

"We can get on camera and work together with them to help evaluate and treat that stroke as quickly as possible, even if they're hundreds of miles away," Pabst said. "Our goal is that they can get that same initial care as if they were here within the walls of Primary Children's Hospital."

During its rollout year, the network helped 19 children. Pabst said the goal is to expand Telestroke access to other care sites in Nevada, Colorado, Montana and Wyoming to help even more families.

Today, Lucy is doing well — back in school and having just returned from New York City, where she and her choir group performed at Carnegie Hall.

"She's been able to make almost a complete recovery and back to normal function thanks to the time and the efforts of a lot of people," Randy said.

"I've been feeling really good — I have definitely felt this miracle in my life," Lucy added.

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