NEW CASTLE — All John Corey wanted was a picture.

Not much else mattered at this point.

A day that, at first, allowed him to spend time with his wife and three kids, ended with him clinging to a family photo and wondering if he would ever see any of them again.

A teacher at New Castle High School, Corey was off for Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 16, and the Neshannock High basketball coach spent it relaxing with his wife, Kelly, and 10-month-old twins, Jared and Kendall.

The couple has just started to enjoy family life. John and Kelly met in 2007 and were three months shy of their second wedding anniversary  April 17. They had twins in March 2011, who are just starting to crawl — and climb — around the house. John and Kelly also spend a lot of time with John’s 8-year-old son, Jay, who lives with his mom in Ohio, and with basketball season taking up a large portion of John’s time, days like this one are rare.

No work. No basketball. Life was good ... but not for long.

As he and Kelly finished putting the kids to bed around 10 p.m., John started to sense some pain in his neck. He then began feeling dizzy and was blacking out for short periods at a time. Vomiting and a massive headache quickly ensued, and while he tried to tell himself it was just the flu, he knew something more severe was looming.

He then told Kelly to call her father to come watch the kids because he needed to go the hospital, a statement that struck a bit of fear into Kelly.

“He’s not one to go to the doctor or the hospital,” she said. “He won’t even take a Tylenol, so I knew something was wrong.”



A FRIGHTENING TIME

What the problem was took a while to figure out.

The vomiting had subsided by the time an ambulance arrived, but his other symptoms were increasing by the time he arrived at Jameson Hospital, especially the headache, which was as powerful as ever at this point. Adding to the situation was Corey’s confusion. He didn’t know his age or where he was, and his recollection of what happened earlier in the night wasn’t making sense.

That caused the doctors to run tests for an aneurysm and spinal meningitis, both life-threatening conditions. The tests back came negative, which was good news, but the headache hadn’t dissipated, and the reason for all the problems was still unknown. A severe migraine was the next prognosis, but that didn’t explain his lack of awareness, dizziness and vomiting. And the pain continued despite two IVs with medicine to subdue it.

“It was the worst head pressure that I could even try to explain,” he said. “My wife said, ‘From when this started Monday night, I don’t think you really opened up your eyes until 6 a.m. (Tuesday) morning.’ That’s how bad it hurt. I didn’t want to see any light. I didn’t want to open my eyes.”

An MRI was the next step, but with the neurological staff gone until the morning, they had to wait, so Kelly decided to run back to their house, just a few minutes away, to grab some things for John. She asked her husband what he needed, and his response underscored the severity of the situation.

“The only thing I could tell her that I needed or I wanted was a picture of the kids,” he said, “because even though they (the doctors) were coming back and telling me, ‘It wasn’t spinal meningitis. It wasn’t this. The CAT scan was OK,’ I still felt like something was wrong.”



THE DIAGNOSIS

His sense became reality in the morning. An MRI revealed that the 33-year-old Corey suffered a stroke, and he was immediately moved to intensive care. His condition worsened not long after that. The nurse told Kelly she needed to pick a cardiologist, and she called her family doctor to discuss her options.

“When I was walking back into the room, the nurse kind of cut me off,” Kelly said. “She grabbed the other nurse and she whispered something to her, and I saw the look on her face change. So I told the nurse, ‘I need to see you outside.’ She shut the door behind us and said, ‘Kelly, it’s really bad. He had a brain hemorrhage and they’re life flighting him to Pittsburgh.’ ”

Kelly spoke to one of the doctors working on John a few moments later, and he informed her that John was suffering from bleeding and swelling of the brain. He continued to explain how John would be undergoing brain surgery in the coming hours. Kelly’s concern began to sky rocket at this point, and she demanded to be allowed on the helicopter taking him to Pittsburgh, fearing it might be the last time she would see her husband.

“I begged them,” said Kelly, trying to hold back tears. “I thought he was dying. The way it was happening, I didn’t think I was going to see him again. I grabbed the nurse, and I said, ‘You have to get me on that helicopter!’ ”

Her wish couldn’t be granted because the weight of the helicopter had to be kept at an absolute minimum to expedite the trip to Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh. John didn’t leave completely alone, however. Kelly caught up to him before he was placed on the helicopter.

“I gave him the picture of the babies, and they had it tucked in his hospital gown,” she said.



A TURN FOR THE BETTER

The situation took a strange-but-positive turn once he landed in Pittsburgh. After hearing the initial diagnosis of a brain hemorrhage, the doctors were shocked that Corey was lucid and didn’t have any paralysis. So they took a look at the MRI and saw something different.

The initial diagnosis was that a vessel in his brain split, causing the hemorrhage, but at Presbyterian, the doctors told the Coreys there was a blood clot in his brain. This was still the cause of a stroke, and a severe situation, but it wasn’t as life threatening as orginally believed. The technical wording was an “ischemic stroke,” which is when the blood supply to part of the brain is diminished, leading to dysfunction in that area, according to Corey.

It was still a bit stunning to John and Kelly that he had a stroke at age 33, but it was a better diagnosis than initially thought. And it kept getting better.

“They said they were going to do an angiogram tomorrow (Wednesday), which is when they stick a tube into your hip and it goes all the way up and shoots stuff into your artery so they can look at pictures of the brain,” John said. “The MRI showed where the clot was, but the goal of that (the angiogram) was to see how bad it was, what’s going on and to give them a more detailed look.”

The vast changes from the initial examination kept coming. When the doctors looked at the angiogram on Wednesday, they couldn’t find the clot, John said. That meant no procedure was necessary because the clot dissipated, but it also left a gray area — a really large gray area. The doctors couldn’t tell the Coreys exactly how or why this all happened.

“All of the symptoms that would have led to a blood clot and a stroke, I didn’t have,” John said. “So, I never really got an answer as to why this happened. The next day, Thursday, they did a procedure where they stuck tubes down my throat and took a picture of the back of my heart. They were looking for a hole, a heart murmur or something like that ... to see if there was something there that was causing the blood to clot.

“That was on Thursday at about 1 o’clock, and by 5 o’clock I was on the road coming home because that came back negative as well.”



QUESTIONS THAT REMAIN

One of the most frightening experiences of the Coreys’ lives ended as suddenly as it started. And while the news was good, not knowing the cause of the clot was troubling, and it left questions the couple would rather not ponder. How can John avoid another stroke? Will it happen again? Will the stress of coaching increase those chances? Why did his blood clot in the first place?

If those questions do arise and affect John’s well being, he said he’ll look to the same values that got him through the stroke to help him overcome the after-effects.

“Everywhere they pushed me down at Presby, through every test they did, I had that picture,” he said. “It was on my chest when they started working on me, and when they were getting ready to do the angiogram, they said, ‘OK, we’re going to put your picture over here.’ I remember after they were done, they said, ‘OK, we’re going to move you out now,’ and I said, ‘OK, make sure you give me my picture.’

“So, that was kind of my strength, my keepsake, for those couple days.”

And it will continue to be for the rest of his life.

(Email: j_simon@ncnewsonline.com)