Firefighter Corey Showers sat between two recliners at a Kinston fire station a year ago this month, unable to speak or move the right side of his body.
Fellow firefighter Brandon Harper, encountering Showers — now 29 — in that condition, thought he was the focus of a prank, but it wasn’t too long before everyone knew the gravity of what was in progress.
The stroke Showers suffered, and the treatment provided from more than 180 miles away, led to his name given to the telemedicine robot that helped save his life.
Speaking following emergency services training at Lenoir Memorial Hospital on Wednesday, Showers said he didn’t realize what actually happened to him until after he was already under treatment at LMH.
“Well, I was on shift with the Kinston fire department — I was on Engine 11 that day — and I lifted a patient,” Showers said. “It wasn’t a terribly heavy patient, but I just had my head cranked the wrong way and my left carotid artery dissected. So, the inside wall of the artery flapped open. There wasn’t blood leaking out of the artery or anything like that, it just flapped open. So, a clot started to form there.”