JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A 13-year-old Jacksonville boy is on the road to recovery after suffering a stroke following an otherwise routine baseball practice.
It was during a January practice that Carlos Ortiz, an eighth grader at Patriots Oak Academy, noticed he didn’t feel right. What began with a headache while he was doing drills escalated into a much more serious issue.
“I started feeling a small headache and then my whole left side started going numb and then I got really dizzy,” Ortiz recalled, adding that he also began losing vision in his left eye.
Ortiz told his father, Carlos Ortiz Sr., who recognized right away something was wrong.
“I have never seen him like that before, it was not the normal Carlos,” said Ortiz, Sr. “That right there gave me that gut feeling something is wrong for real.”
Ortiz Sr. rushed his son to the Wolfson Emergency Center at Baptist South Medical Center. The center, which provides emergency care for children, had just opened a week earlier.
“They did some blood work and some imaging, and the doctor came back it said it might be a stroke,” Ortiz Sr. said. “I just couldn’t believe it. I started crying. It was the worst experience that I’ve ever been through. Just seeing my kid, a healthy 13-year-old, and hearing the word ‘stroke,’ it was hard to believe."
Ortiz was then taken to Wolfson Children’s Hospital’s main campus where an MRI confirmed the doctor’s initial suspicions — the teen had suffered a stroke.
Ortiz with family
Time was of the essence in this case.
Dr. Harry Abram, pediatric neurologist with Wolfson Children’s Hospital and Nemours Children’s Specialty Care, said Ortiz was a candidate for a medication designed to bust clots, called a tissue plasminogen activator (TPA). It’s a treatment commonly used in adults, but rarely in children.
“In an adult we only have a 4 1/2-hour window from when he was last seen well to give the medication,” Dr. Abram said. “In children and teenagers, there’s not much data.”
Ortiz received the TPA through an IV. Within 30 minutes, his arm started moving and he said his vision began to return.
“The next morning we did a heart study and determined he had a small hole in his heart that he was unaware of,” said Dr. Abram. “And through that hole in the heart, a small clot had crossed over into his brain and led to the stroke.”
Ortiz spent a few nights in the hospital and will likely need a heart procedure to repair the hole in his heart. But he said he feels much better now.
“I don’t feel like anything happened, it’s kind of all the same,” the teen said.
After a check-up, he said, doctors will let him know if he can return to playing sports.
Wolfson Children’s Hospital has six emergency centers in northeast Florida. Click here to find a list of the locations.