Greeting visitors at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital’s main entrance with a guitar duet, Dr. Marion Oliver and Ken Krull were in perfect harmony instrumentally and vocally as they strummed away.
The outwardly unlikely pair – younger neurointerventionalist surgeon Oliver and musically-inclined septuagenarian Krull – looked like they had been playing together for decades. But their association only went back two months, when another kind of Oliver handiwork saved Krull’s life.
The duo only were beginning to tell their story as Oliver sang the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” with Krull’s accompaniment.
Krull and Oliver met in a crisis. Krull suffered a severe stroke with a blood clot in his brain. After emergency treatment in which physicians administered a clot-busting drug that slightly improved symptoms, Oliver took over to conduct a mechanical thrombectomy, in which a thin wire is inserted – usually through the groin – and threaded through blood vessels to the afflicted area.
The minimally invasive procedure, now used commonly to attack clots without possibly damaging incisions, was completely successful. With blood flow normal in the brain, Krull’s condition quickly returned to normal.
Oliver was particularly taken with what Krull’s family’s said as he was admitted.
“When Ken came into the hospital, his family immediately mentioned his musical talent and asked me to take care of his hands,” Oliver said. “As a guitar player myself, that really resonated with me. Thanks to the speed and skill of the team here at Advocate Lutheran General, Ken is able to get back to doing what he loves.”
To draw attention to the need to act quickly to obtain emergency care for National Stroke Awareness Month in May, Oliver joined forces with Krull and his wife, Deb, to relay his story. As three television cameras recorded their words, Oliver showed before-and-after images of Krull’s brain – no blood from the point of the clot upward, then normal flow once the clot was dissolved.
Deb Krull, a respiratory therapist, was given almost as much credit for saving her husband as Oliver. The Krulls, married 38 years, were in bed watching TV on the eve of his 70th birthday when Ken suddenly struggled trying to get up to go to the bathroom. He had trouble climbing over their shepherd mix dog Arlie. When Ken started slurring his words, Deb asked her husband to smile, and saw the entire left side of his face was drooping.
Speed was of the essence in getting Krull treatment.
“Two million neurons die every 60 seconds,” said Oliver. “If you feel off-balance, if you have vision problems where you can’t see out of one eye, if your speech is slurred, don’t wait. Get to the hospital immediately.”
“I had all the symptoms,” said Krull.
His episode began at 10:08 p.m. Thanks to Deb Krull’s quick thinking, her husband was on his way to the hospital with EMTs by 10:15 p.m. Oliver said stroke victims have about a 4 ½-hour window to get the type of treatment he administered Krull before permanent damage or death occurs.
Not only does Oliver work the strings when he is not on duty, but he has guitar instrumentals playing in the background as mental pacing music while he is literally threading his needle in the operating room.
Oliver said the “floodgates opened” around 2017-18 for procedures like the thrombectomy.
However quickly his stroke was cured, Krull said he “still has not processed the severity of the condition.”
But ever-vigilant Deb Krull is not allowing him to think too much about his brush with death. She booked a trip to Ireland in honor of Ken’s 70th birthday.
Until he hops his trans-Atlantic flight, Krull had more music to take.
After detailing his story, he and Oliver walked over to a sunny atrium at Lutheran General to resume their melodious session. They picked a tune that Krull was old enough to remember when it made its debut on Top 40 radio nearly 60 years ago.
Oliver sang of misty mornings as he vocalized Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl.” Krull’s fingers flew on the strings as fast as ever, looking, to casual passers by, like the picture of health.