Mark Welinski

Mark was cleaning his garage and knocked a steel deer cart off the wall. “It conked me on the head,” he says. “I didn’t think anything of it. I played football way back and got knocked on the head then, and I was always fine.”

About a month later, Mark was out deer hunting and lost his balance. “I was stumbling, and having a little trouble with speech,” he recalls. “When I got home, I asked my wife Karen the same question eight times in five minutes. She was very alarmed. She grabbed me and took me right to the ED.”

When the triage nurse heard Mark’s symptoms and that he’d suffered a bang on the head recently, “they lost no time,” Mark says. “They very quickly got me evaluated.”

Trouble with balance and speech points to a brain injury, or stroke. The ED team did a CT scan, and used TeleStroke to consult with a stroke neurologist at a certified Comprehensive Stroke Center, through NH+C’s partnership with Allina Health. TeleStroke lets a neurologist examine a patient remotely, using video technology at the bedside.

Mark’s diagnosis: It wasn’t a stroke.

Mark had a bleed inside his brain. 

Within 30 minutes of his arrival, Mark was being transferred by helicopter to Hennepin Health in Minneapolis – NH+C’s partner for trauma care. 

“Thank goodness for the nurses and doctors at Northfield Hospital,” Mark says. “Thank goodness they had the correct equipment to assess me accurately, and move me on to the next level of care.”

Mark needed surgery to remove the blood that had pooled at the injury site, putting pressure on his brain.

He’s been on blood thinners for many years, so Mark’s care team stopped that medication and waited 48 hours for Mark’s blood to thicken before performing brain surgery. 

“I had an aortic valve replacement at age 42,” Mark recalls. “They told me back then to be careful if I hit my head, because I had started taking blood thinners. Looking back, I feel lucky that this was the first incident where I really bumped my head.”

Mark’s surgery was successful. Then, while recovering at Hennepin, during a physical therapy session, Mark’s speech became garbled. He was having a stroke: a CT scan showed a small, second bleed near the speech center of his brain some distance from the original bleed. It was minor enough to resolve itself without surgery.

Mark came home a week later. He has fully recovered since then.

His care team at Hennepin Health told Mark he had “the best outcome possible” because of the fast action of Northfield Hospital’s ED team. 

“They acted quickly and efficiently, and that paid off in the long run,” Mark says. “I’m very thankful Northfield Hospital was able to make the assessments and then move me on to the best place for care as quickly as possible.”

Northfield Hospital is a certified Acute Stroke Ready Hospital, equipped to diagnose, stabilize, treat, and transfer stroke patients if needed. Because NH+C is an independent hospital, it has partnerships with the region’s top specialists in critical fields of care. That way, NH+C can get patients the best care in trauma, stroke, cardiology and other time-urgent specialties. 

Mark’s advice for tackling the workshop and the woods: “Be careful as you age. Take your time accomplishing tasks when you can. And move forward with confidence that you have a very solid medical facility available around the clock.”

That’s using your head.