The one-two punch of a ruptured blood vessel supplying his brain and then a stroke was no match for Jonathan Stout of Lewisville, North Carolina – not with relentless medical care and Team Jonathan cheering him on during a grueling five-month recovery.
When Jonathan woke up from his medically induced coma at Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center, his wife, Kristen, was there. She looked at him and, speaking extra-loud because she thought she had to, asked, “Who am I?
“Kristen,” he answered, adding, “Why are you yelling at me?”
Then they hugged.
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Out of the blue, a seizure
Jonathan, now 39, was the picture of health and happiness in the summer of 2023.
He regularly aced his physicals. He ran 25 miles a week. He didn’t smoke. Their daughter, Audrey, filled their lives with sunshine. Kristen was seven months pregnant with their second. (Madison is now 2.) Jonathan enjoyed his job as a district manager with the State Employees’ Credit Union in Winston-Salem. He had none of the risk factors – underlying medical issues, family history, a traumatic brain injury – for what was about to happen.
At 2 a.m. June 6, Audrey, who was 5 at the time, called out in her sleep. Kristen went to her room and lie down with her. She noticed that Jonathan had gotten up and gone to the kitchen. She heard a loud thud. Kristen ran back to their bedroom and found him face down on the floor. He was having the first seizure of his life.
Kristen called 911. As he was rushed by ambulance to the neurological intensive care unit at Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, he begged the EMTS to let him take two ibuprofen and go back to bed. They told him he needed surgery or he might die.
Doctors in the neurological ICU inserted a coil via a catheter to seal off the broken vessel. “The damaged vessel had to be sacrificed to save his life,” said Dr. Mitch Hargis, a neuro-intensivist at Forsyth Medical Center. “The sacrificed vessel caused Jonathan to have a stroke.” He was put on a ventilator, in a medically induced coma, while his lungs healed. He was brought out of it 28 days later.
After the coma, it was up to him to do the work to get better.
Dr. Michael Morgan, an infectious disease specialist, treated Jonathan’s postoperative pneumonia and a bone infection. Both occurred after Jonathan suffered the spontaneous rupture of the blood vessel in his brain. The medical term is a dissecting cerebral aneurysm.
It’s as scary as it sounds. Some 30,000 people in the United States suffer a brain aneurysm rupture each year. If left untreated, the mortality rate reaches up to 80% over five years.
Morgan decided a pep talk would help. He told Jonathan he could be depressed about what happened or he could see life after the aneurysm as a second chance. Then came some added incentive: “Once the bedsore is healed and you are able to walk.” Morgan told his patient they’d go out to celebrate.
“If he didn’t have the determination,” Morgan said, “he’d be in a wheelchair right now.”
Fast forward: A cold one never tasted so good.
Welcome home, ‘Johnathan’
After 42 days in the hospital, Jonathan spent a month at Novant Health Rehabilitation Center in Winston-Salem, working to regain use of his right side. He walked on a treadmill, lifted weights and worked on his vision among other exercises.
When it was time for rehabilitation, their 6-year-old daughter, Audrey, delivered his marching orders. “Get up, you’re going to walk. God believes in you and so do I.”
Later he moved in with his parents in Greensboro to continue outpatient physical therapy. He vowed not to move back home until he could be the husband and father his family deserved.
That came five months later on Nov. 9, 2023.
He loved the WELCOME HOME JOHNATHAN sign in the front yard, even if in their excitement his family accidentally added an ‘H” to his name.
It’s the thought that counts, right?” Jonathan quipped.
The homecoming was also a milestone for the medical team that cared for him.
“It’s very good to see our patients get better,” Hargis said. “It reminds me why we do all this.”
‘I have a really good life’
Jonathan went back to work on May 9, 2024, grateful to the credit union for holding his job for him.
He’s walking 15-minute miles and can run for 45 to 50 seconds before tiring out. (The first time he ran, his daughter, Audrey, said “I told you!”) He feels pins and needles, as he described it, in his right shoulder and around his right eye socket. He’s lost 80% of the hearing in his right ear.
He’s hoping that with time, exercise and continued therapy, he can return to the life and health he enjoyed before the aneurysm and stroke.
Jonathan said there are still days when he wants to lie down on the sofa and shut off the rest of the world. When the darkness closes in, he thinks about Kristen and their two daughters. He reminds himself of the lesson he’s learned, the one he is eager to share: “Everything can be taken from you instantly. Enjoy every day. Don’t stress about small things. … I’m grateful to be alive. I have a really good life.”
