By James V. Horrigan
Staff Writer
It was only six weeks ago, but Stephanie Ruel will never forget the events of Sept. 23.
“It was a very pretty fall day, the sun was shining bright,” Ruel, 43, said Monday from the dining room of the Fairfield Road home she shares with her husband Mike and their two children, Katelynne, 16 and Brandon, 12. “We took the kids, us and another couple and went apple-picking at Randall’s Orchard in Standish. Then we all met up with some other friends at Applebee’s for dinner.”
Apple picking? Applebee’s? It sounds nice, and no doubt a lot of fun, but for most people those events are not the seeds of great memories.
But Stephanie Ruel isn’t like most people. Getting together with friends and family “to commemorate the day” was a special, precious opportunity that one year earlier seemed not just unlikely, but inconceivable.
The reason why she will not forget the events of Sept. 23 is the same reason why she said, “I don’t really remember much,” about the events of Sept. 23, 2006.
“I got up and was doing those Saturday morning things,” like getting ready to drive Katelynne, then 15, to her part-time job at Maggie Moos in South Portland. “It was probably 9:30-10 o’clock; I was working in the computer room and all of a sudden I had a headache that was too much to bear.”
She hollered upstairs to Katelynne.
“I said I really need you to get me an ice pack out of the freezer.”
Because she had never been prone to headaches and seldom took so much as an Advil, Ruel knew that her daughter must have thought it was really strange.
But before Katelynne even got to the refrigerator her mother said she didn’t feel very well at all and that she should call her father at the Scarborough Hannaford’s, where he is the assistant manager.
Katelynne however “took one look at me and thought ‘she doesn’t need dad, she needs 911.’
“By the time she got back to me in the computer room I had started to slur my words and was starting to lose consciousness.”
Fortunately for Stephanie, Scarborough’s emergency response team is headquartered just up the street.
“But when the rescue arrived the driver and the tech realized it was a pretty serious situation,” she said.
By this point, Mike Ruel had received a message saying “there’s an emergency at home and you should drive as quickly as you can, but as safely as you can, and get home.”
As he headed down Route 1, an ambulance pulled out of Fairfield Road and sped past him.
“My heart sunk down to my toes,” Mike Ruel recalled. “At that point we didn’t really know obviously what was wrong. All I was told was that it appears she’s had some sort of seizure, but I know she has no history of seizures.”
When he and the kids arrived at Maine Medical Center (MMC), they were met by a neurosurgeon, Dr. Konrad Barth, who told him they wanted to do an immediate CAT scan. It soon became apparent that Stephanie Ruel had not suffered a seizure at all.
“She’s got a full-blown head bleed, a massive brain aneurysm, which had just ruptured,” Mike Ruel learned.
Barth, though on call that day at MMC, has an office on Spring Street in Scarborough. He pulled Mike Ruel out of the waiting room and explained the prognosis. Stephanie Ruel needed surgery, difficult and dangerous surgery. And she needed it immediately.
“He’s just looking for consent to do the surgery,” Mike Ruel said. “Things at this point look very, very bleak and I just said let me sign whatever I need to sign and let’s get the ball rolling. You said that time is not on our side so let’s get moving and whatever happens happens.”
Mike Ruel’s concern for his wife was unmistakable, but Barth had to make sure that he knew the reality of the situation.
“He gave me some honest statistics of somebody in her state. He said nine out of 10 people don’t even make it through the surgery,” Mike Ruel said.
Possible outcomes, he was told, included “vegetable, not a very good quality of life, or being restricted to a wheelchair. So I spoke with the kids and said that Mommy is very, very serious and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
Following the surgery Stephanie Ruel lapsed into a coma that lasted for three weeks. Mike Ruel, Katelynne and Brandon visited her daily and kept a steady vigil by her bedside. Because Stephanie Ruel is a big fan of country music, Brandon suggested they bring in a radio and tune it to WPOR, her favorite station.
That marked the start of her recovery, which, Mike Ruel said, “amazed” the medical staff, who referred to it as a miracle. Because she’d had a tracheotomy and couldn’t speak, Stephanie Ruel soon began making motions with her hand. It seemed like she wanted a pen.
“I’m a legal assistant,” she explains. “I’ve been affiliated with the same law firm, Drummond Woodsum & MacMahon, for 22 years, so I’m a good note taker.”
It soon became apparent though that Stephanie Ruel didn’t want to take notes, so much as make them.
“We put a piece of paper on a clipboard,” Mike Ruel recalls, “and gave her a Sharpie and out of the clear blue, with her eyes still closed, she starts writing things.”
With her eyes closed? She starts writing?
“It was perfect handwriting,” Mike Ruel boasts. “We couldn’t believe it was happening. I was so blown away.”
The kids were, too, especially Brandon, since the first message she communicated was directed at him.
“I wrote ‘Brandon, are you being a good boy?’ It was not out of character,” she laughed, “because he’s 12 years old and sometimes he’s not a good boy.”
Not long after Stephanie Ruel began writing, the tracheotomy healed to the point that she could speak. Although physically she still had a long, uphill battle to fight before she would be back to normal, it was apparent by then that as far as her mental faculties were concerned, “a miracle” had indeed taken place.
Stephanie Ruel was soon transferred to New England Rehabilitation Hospital in Portland, where physical therapy became a grueling and difficult full-time job. But she kept at it and never gave up, even after catching a glimpse of her chart one day and seeing that one of the nurses had noted early on that she was “not a good candidate for rehab.”
But Stephanie Ruel persevered and impressed not only herself, her family and friends, but her therapists and fellow PT patients, as well. The result is that a year later on Sept. 19, in a luncheon ceremony at Maine Medical Center during National Rehab Week, she was awarded a certificate of recognition, honoring her “achievement while overcoming barriers and exceeding personal expectations.”
Letters of congratulations from Gov. John Baldacci, U.S Rep. Tom Allen and U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe accompanied the award, which is now framed and hanging in a place of honor in the Ruel home.
It was less than one year from what she thinks of as “the incident,” or intracerebral hemorrhage, as it is formally known, and barely a week before the trip to go apple-picking and the get-together at Applebee’s, but life as Stephanie Ruel once knew it had largely returned to normal.
When asked if she now has any goals or ambitions that she hadn’t had before the stroke, Stephanie Ruel responds without hesitation. “I’d like to volunteer at Maine Medical. In the short period of time after I came out of the coma and before I was transferred to New England Rehab, every volunteer that came into my room was just the kindest, sweetest person. At some point down the road I’d like to do that, too.”