‘It was miraculous. This procedure gave me back my life’

Rachel Corbally knows the value of thrombectomy very well after it saved her life last January.

The sports-mad 48-year-old from Naas had no reason to believe anything was amiss when she awoke one Monday morning, fresh from a vigorous gym session the previous evening.

On getting up, however, she felt “a bit fuzzy” and then collapsed suddenly on the floor. Having lost power on her left and right sides, she was unable to move.

Fortunately, her adult son was at home and realised the seriousness of the situation. An ambulance was called and brought her to Naas hospital, where doctors diagnosed deep vein thrombosis causing stroke.

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Under the State’s stroke programme, Naas patients are brought to the national treatment centre at Beaumont Hospital, Dublin. In little over an hour, Corbally found herself undergoing a painful procedure in which a tube is inserted into an artery in the groin. This is passed through blood vessels to the brain, where it sucks out the clot causing the stroke.

Surgical success

Though painful, the procedure led to her complete recovery. Within days, she was out on a date, within a week she did a job interview and in little over two weeks she was back doing laps in the swimming pool. She has since begun a new job with demanding travel requirements.

“It was miraculous,” she says. “It’s very seldom you come across something in life that is, but this procedure gave me back my life.”

The success of her surgery also saved the health system a lot of money, as the costs of looking after the long-term needs of incapacitated stroke patients are considerable.

“I’m just so lucky someone invented this machine, and that my local hospital had an agreement with Beaumont. It’s frightening to think that it mightn’t have been working due to a breakdown.”