By Brooke Steinberg
A 17-year-old boy who suffered a severe stroke lives to tell the tale thanks to his hero dog.
Amanda and Daines Tanner, who live in Spring, Texas, were woken up by their 1-year-old border collie at around 5 a.m. on Aug. 26. At first they ignored the pup, named Axel, thinking he just wanted to be let outside.
“He was pawing me more than normal to get me to move,” Amanda, 44, told Today.com.
The dog continued to try to wake the couple, so Daines got out of bed to let him out. But instead of going outside, Axel walked right to the door of the other bedroom and refused to move.
Daines opened the door and found his stepson, Gabriel Silva, suffering from a stroke: He was slurring his words and couldn’t move the right side of his body.
“Axel has always been very intuitive. He can tell when something is wrong — like if we are feeling down or stressed — and he does his best to fix the problem,” Silva told People magazine. “That morning he must have sensed I needed help so he woke up someone who could help.”
Silva was rushed to the emergency room, then was transferred to a medical center to get specialized care from Dr. Sabih Effendi, a neurosurgeon and the hospital’s stroke specialist.
Silva is in his “senior year, [he plays] varsity soccer,” his shaken mother said. “And I’m like, what just happened? A whole life of planning and it all looks different now.”
“We wouldn’t have thought to go into Gabriel’s room and wake him up. He’s a teenager. It was a Saturday morning. We went to bed late. We wouldn’t think to go in there until maybe noon,” Amanda added.
By the time Effendi saw Silva, he had lost all ability to speak and his right hand was extremely weak. The high school senior underwent a cerebral angiogram, and the doctor discovered he had an artery dissection, an emergency condition that occurs when a tear forms in the lining of an artery, according to Mayo Clinic.
The artery dissection caused an ischemic stroke, which occurs when a blood vessel supplying blood to the brain is obstructed, according to the American Stroke Association. This type of stroke accounts for 87% of all strokes.
Silva was given blood thinners to restore the blood flow to his brain as quickly as possible.
Doctors said that if he got medical attention any later than he did, he would have been “unable to be functional in life.”
Effendi said that Axel made a “massive” difference in saving Silva from getting to that point.
“Millions of neurons are lost each minute that passes during an ischemic stroke, ultimately impacting speech and movement and could even result in death,” the doctor told People. “Had the family dog not alerted Gabriel’s parents, and had Gabriel’s parents not identified his symptoms as stroke symptoms, the time to treatment could have been severely delayed resulting in a much different outcome for Gabriel.”
He continued, “Instead, Gabriel is walking, talking and looking forward to finishing his senior year of high school.”
Silva spent a week in the hospital before being transferred to TIRR Memorial Hermann rehab center, where he went through physical, occupational and speech therapy. He’s now in the process of recovering in outpatient therapy — and has high hopes of returning to school and soccer in a matter of weeks.
As for Axel, the brave dog hasn’t left Silva’s side — and Amanda wants to make him a mini medal of honor to put on his collar.
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Dog saves teen from deadly stroke: ‘He can tell when something is wrong’