ST. LOUIS — World Stroke Day is Oct. 29, and this year, two Missouri men are marking it by sharing their stories of survival. Rob Benedict and Dale Goodwin are both alive due to coworkers stepping up to help them.
Benedict is a Columbia, Missouri native, but no longer lives there as he pursues his acting and musical career. He’s most well-known for his role as Chuck on The CW show, “Supernatural.” During the show’s Toronto convention in 2013, his life flipped upside down, literally.
“A couple actors, as a joke, sort of turned me upside down,” Benedict said. “It ended up tearing my carotid artery.”
He carried on with the convention, despite not feeling well. It got worse as the day progressed.
“As I’m signing autographs, I couldn’t talk,” Benedict said.
He returned to his hotel room for the night, but his co-star Richard Speight Jr. decided to check on him.
“He [Speight] jokes that I said no to dinner, to which he thought, OK there's something wrong,” he said.
Speight convinced Benedict to go to the hospital, where he learned the tear in his carotid artery caused a blood clot in his brain. He was having a stroke. Doctors in Toronto gave him a clot-busting drug, which came with its own set of serious side effects.
“It was kinda touch and go,” Benedict recalled. “There was a chance the shot can kill you. You can bleed out, so that was a concern. I got worse before I got better. I just couldn’t talk at all the next day, and I had to slowly learn to piece words back together again… I have this black spot if you do an MRI of my head. It shows the dead cells where I had my stroke, but literally the brain remapped itself so I could learn to talk again.”
Not only is Benedict talking and acting again, he’s writing, singing and performing music with his band, Louden Swain. That includes a song called “Amazing” which is a thank you to fans for their support.
“A little bit of luck and a lot of faith and love from people around me, including the fans,” Benedict said. “It is very wrapped within the fandom of Supernatural.”
Benedict said doctors also told him he might never have a pulse in his left carotid artery, but that has since healed as well.
For Goodwin, his stroke happened while he was on the clock as a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Deputy. His daughter, Carly Smith, said Sheriff Steve Pelton called her after her dad collapsed, moments before he was supposed to get in his car and head out on patrol.
“The sheriff had stopped him to talk,” Smith said. “While they were talking, he was eating an apple and they said out of nowhere, he just dropped his apple and slumped against the wall. They were talking to him. They couldn’t get him to respond, so they immediately called 911.”
Sheriff Pelton thought Goodwin was showing signs of a stroke. Instead of taking Goodwin to the closest hospital, which was Washington Mercy Hospital, paramedics took him an extra 27 miles to SSM Health St. Clare Hospital. There, they met Dr. Ashish Nanda in the Level One Stroke Center.
Dr. Nanda is a neurointerventionalist and stroke specialist. After tests located the clot in Goodwin’s brain, Dr. Nanda performed a mechanical thrombectomy.
“All these blood vessels are interconnected inside the body, so we can navigate the catheter through these branches and get to the final branch which has the blockage,” Dr. Nanda explained. “We were able to get the catheter through the artery in his leg and snake it all the way up across and into the carotid artery and into the brain. Once we got to the clot, we were able to break the clot and just grab it out and remove it. By doing that, we were able to re-establish the flow back to the blocked part of the brain.”
The device to perform these kinds of life-saving procedures is only about 15 years old.
Dr. Nanda credits Sheriff Pelton with playing a major role in Goodwin’s positive outcome.
“It was good he was at a place where he had his peers that were able to recognize the symptoms of stroke and they could see that there was something off,” Dr. Nanda said. “Those minutes that were saved really changed his life because we were able to perform that procedure in a timely fashion.”
Smith is thankful for the positive outcome for multiple reasons. Her father’s stroke happened on Aug. 7, 2018, two years to the day she lost her brother in a deadly shooting. She was also 10 weeks pregnant with Goodwin’s first grandchild at the time of the stroke.
“We didn’t know if he was going to make it, or if he was going to be an active, present grandpa, and he is,” Smith said as her expression shifted from worry to joy. “He's very present in my son's life and that’s because of Dr. Nanda, really. Every day that we have with him, I don’t take that for granted, especially with all the loss my family has had. Having him and knowing that he's ok means everything.”
In the wake of Goodwin’s stroke, Smith made a career move and now works for SSM Health. She’s a communications consultant, sharing about the hospital’s life-saving work.
Benedict is also using his experience to spark conversations about stroke symptoms. He’s teamed up with Stands for sales that support the American Stroke Association and shares their information on social media.
“I don’t post pictures of my kids online,” Benedict said. “I don’t post personal stuff with me. I’m not an open book like that. But when it comes to this, I talk very openly about it. I’ve had many fans tell me that that saved their grandfather, father, mother, sister’s, whatever’s life.”
It became even more important to Benedict after another Missouri native who acted on “Supernatural” had a stroke too. Timothy Omundson’s stroke happened in April 2017, and Benedict said they have talked through the recovery process.
Omundson has not hidden the after affects of his stroke from the screen. He’s brought that authentic part of his life into roles on “This Is Us” and “Psych.”
Searches for stroke symptoms spiked again in March 2019, when actor Luke Perry died from complications following a stroke.
“It does make a big difference when celebrities come out and talk about their experience and promote the stroke awareness,” Dr. Nanda said. “That actually helps to educate their fan following as well as the community to understand the symptoms of stroke and how the timely treatment can make a difference in their lives and recovery.”
Doctors and the American Stroke Association say you can easily remember the symptoms of stroke with the acronym, “BE FAST” which stands for:
- Balance Issues
- Eyes can’t focus
- Face drooping
- Arm weakness
- Speech difficulties
- Time to call 911
The key for successfully treating strokes is getting the patient to the hospital as fast as possible. The longer the blood flow to the brain is blocked, the harder it is to fully recover.
“If it wasn’t for the people around my dad recognizing that so quickly and getting him the help he needed, he might not be here today,” Smith said.
But not everyone presents with those common symptoms.
“Suddenly becoming confused, or having an acute onset of a headache, or just developing nausea or vomiting, having balance difficulties, that can be the symptoms of an atypical stroke,” Dr. Nanda said. “Then there are strokes that can be called ‘silent strokes’ that we can see as an evidence on an MRI which typically do not have any symptoms. Those are very small strokes that can happen from risk factors like high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking.”
Staff at SSM Health St. Clare said they see an estimated 400 stroke patients a year, including people in their 30s. They told 5 On Your Side they are seeing young adults trigger strokes due to lifestyle risks, as well as intense exercises. Burpees are blamed for a couple strokes a year in the St. Louis area.
Both men are now thankful to be alive.
“You can’t go through life and take it for granted,” Benedict said. “Every day is precious.”