‘All the bells and whistles’: Hospital rolls out new ambulance for stroke patients

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Kathy Baraban was babysitting three of her grandkids, the youngest of them only 2 years old, when she fell to the floor.

“I had lost the grip of the plates in my hand, went to pick them up, put them into the sink, and as I was putting them into the sink, I lost my balance and went down,” she said.

Baraban couldn't flip over onto her stomach. “I couldn’t move anything,” she said.

More than a month later, you would never know she’s a stroke survivor.

Had she not been at her son’s home in Winfield at the time, the outcome could have been very different.

Baraban received critical care in a special ambulance from Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital.

Almost a decade after launching it — the first Mobile Stroke Unit in Illinois — the hospital has rolled out a new, sleeker rig to diagnose and begin treating stroke patients beyond the confines of its emergency department.

It’s the only MSU program in the state.

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