Katie Rangel at prom, just weeks after suffering a stroke – credit, family photo, released

In northeast Texas, a teen survived an “incredibly rare” stroke to be walked to prom two weeks later by the man who insisted she go to the hospital.

Name an 18-year-old softball player who could have interpreted fatigue, a numb leg, and dizziness as an impending stroke.

Katie Rangel was with her boyfriend at the time, and while his worries didn’t extend that far, he firmly suggested that she go to the hospital.

“He was just saying, ‘Should I call 911?'” Rangel told CBS News. “I just remember going into the ambulance and then I think I just kind of blacked out.”

Inside that ambulance, paramedics treated Rangel for a seizure before arriving at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center, in Grapevine. There, physicians concluded that the teen was suffering from a stroke.

It turned out that Rangel had a hole in her heart, through which a blood clot that had formed in her leg traveled up to the left side of her brain. Interventional Radiologist Dr. Abdul R. Quadeer, who was part of the team in the ER that treated Rangel, said it was “lucky” she recovered.

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“Luckily, she came to the ER because if she didn’t come to us, she’d probably be disabled right now,” Dr. Quadeer told CBS, before displaying an image of Rangel’s brain with the clot and without the clot. Luckily, he added, it came right out and normal brain function returned quite quickly.

Discharged from the hospital, Rangel and her boyfriend went to prom exactly as she had planned before the stroke. In her interview with CBS News, it’s clear she understood the gravity of the event and the consequences she managed to swerve.

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“I was on the dance floor almost the whole night and it was really fun,” she said.

Having graduated, Rangel has decided to pursue a career in nursing, inspired, she says, by the kindness and consideration of those who cared for her.

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