Make Medicine Better

Mary Phillips’ headache was a bad one. She was dizzy and nauseated. It was so bad, she lay on the floor of her office at 9890 Clayton Road, where she’s a BJC Hospice supervisor, hoping it would ease before going home. She had decided to ignore her co-workers, who were urging her to seek treatment — it was just a headache.

I thought I was just going to go home and go to bed, but my office mates were having none of that,” Phillips says.

Mary had the door to her office closed and was on the floor when we went in,” says Pat Harlan, a BJC Hospice triage nurse, who was visiting the office along with her dog, Jague Pierre. Pierre, who had been raised with Harlan’s support dog Barrett, began vigorously licking Phillips’ head where she was having the pain.

That was it,” Phillips says. “I’ve been a hospice nurse for a long time, and I’ve watched animals around sick and dying people. This dog had never been very friendly with me before. If he was in a good mood, he’d let me tap his head. His altered behavior, and the fact that Pierre kept licking my head let me know I was in trouble.”

Harlan drove Phillips to the emergency department at Missouri Baptist Medical Center. While Pierre barked unhappily in the car, Phillips was quickly seen by the MBMC staff.

Phillips’ daughter, Missy Stoecker, had been on the phone with her mother when the headache struck. “I met her at the emergency room at Missouri Baptist, and she was the color of ash. The ER doctor acted very quickly, and I think that played a huge part in saving her life.”

I was told by the doctor that there was a huge mass in my head — an aneurysm that they thought had ruptured,” Phillips says. “I was put in an ambulance immediately and transported to Barnes-Jewish Hospital. I was really dying at that point. I had no doubt that I was going to die.”

Becky Brooks, a supervisor for BJC Hospice, happened to be at BJH at the same time with her own daughter. Brooks was familiar with the neurology floor, and when Phillips’ daughter arrived, guided her immediately back to Phillips’ room.

Missy was scared — and rightly so,” Brooks says.

Phillips was suffering from a giant intracranial aneurysm. Giant aneurysms are those defined as larger than 2.5 cm in diameter, and are thought to represent about 5-8 percent of all intracranial aneurysms. Phillips’ was about the size of a walnut and located on the right side of her brain.

The neurosurgeons estimated it had been there more than 15 years. Phillips had never had any physical symptoms or warnings that this condition was growing in her head.

Our family was in the waiting room after they took her for an angiogram, and when the door swung open, five doctors in white lab coats walked out in a row to talk to us, including her physician, Dr. Shore,” Stoecker says. “They were very frank that this was serious, this was life or death. And if she did survive the surgery, she may not be the same person when she came out.

My family and I were absolutely terrified. My mother is the rock of our family, the strong one, always the one to make all the medical recommendations,” Stoecker says. “And at that moment, her life was in someone else’s hands.”

Michael Chicoine, MD, performed the 10-hour surgery the next day, and Phillips was then moved to the neuro ICU at BJH for four days.

I survived the surgery, woke up, and was my same old self,” Phillips says. “I would have been dead if I had gone home. To live through the surgery is one miracle — to come out unscathed is another.

The people at work were quick-thinking, stubborn and wouldn’t let me go home, and that’s why I’m here today,” Phillips adds. “Everyone who cared for me was wonderful — from my co-workers, to the doctors, to the nurses on the neuro ICU floor, to the people in the step-down unit, and especially Dr. Chicoine. I have high standards, being a nurse, and they went above and beyond my expectations.”

Phillips moved into her daughter’s home for two weeks, and received care from BJC Home Care Services. “Not a day went by when I didn’t receive a call or a card from someone at this agency,” Phillips says.

As a result of her ordeal, she has quit smoking, and only two months after her bad headache, she returned to work on Dec. 29.