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Heather Dubrow is revealing new details about the August 3 medical emergency her husband, "Botched" star Dr. Terry Dubrow, faced while they dined at The Ivy — and it's information that can save you or a loved one!
On Thursday's episode of "Let's Talk with Heather Dubrow," Heather walked listeners through the evening when Terry suffered a potentially life-changing — or even life-ending — medical emergency.
"It was a beautiful night out," she recalled of what seemed like it would be a normal meal with son Nicky. She said Nicky was talking about a front-door security code, and Terry tried to ask him, "What's the code?" but he "completely slurred the entire sentence."
Heather immediately knew something wasn't right, and asked if he was okay, but saw that his eyes "were gone — not there. And he started just, like, a little jibberish. Nonsensical... with food in his mouth." She briefly thought the jokester might be kidding, but then realized this was no joke.
"I immediately stood up and I looked at Nicky and I said, 'Call 911,' and I looked over at the maître d' and I said, 'Call 911." She also had Terry spit out his food.
In an emergency — and especially in the case of a stroke — any hesitation can lead to a drastically worse outcome.
Though Terry, 64, then snapped out of it and went to the men's room, she got on the phone with 911, convinced he needed medical attention. When he emerged, he was so embarrassed the couple argued, which was just another symptom, as people suffering from strokes can become belligerent and reluctant to admit anything's wrong.
When the ambulance arrived, Terry did get in, and Heather said the couple has a protocol for what they do in an emergency, a contingency plan she urges everyone to have. In their case, according to Heather, Terry, "the smartest person I've ever met," has told her the two doctors he most trusts in case of an emergency. She texted them, but in the meantime, Terry left the ambulance and called an Uber, insisting he was fine!
The two of them wound up walking down the street in Beverly Hills for 30 minutes while he fumed over what he thought was Heather's overreaction, but what in fact was the kind of action that probably saved his life.
Incredibly, he dropped to the pavement to do push-ups to prove he was fine before taking off. Heather and Nicky resorted to tracking him on the Life360 app to a hotel.
"If he goes into a hotel room, he's gonna die," she remembered thinking, so she lied to him, pretending he could just take an Uber home. While he was Ubering home, she was on the phone with their doctors, begging them to persuade him to go to a hospital.
Finally, the docs persuaded him to seek medical attention — two hours later.
Once he arrived at the hospital, where he is on staff, Terry was undergoing tests but still confident he was okay — even asking to watch the "Botched" premiere on TV!
Terry had an MRI, thinking they'd leave to get sushi after. Instead, they wheeled in a monitor for him to read his own test results. Looking them over, he exclaimed, "F**k! I had a TIA!" A transient ischemic attack is when there is a temporary lack of blood flow to the brain, causing numbness in the arms, dizziness, and confusion. It was the ministroke Heather had feared.
Over the course of the next few days, Terry learned he has a hole in his heart — a patent foramen ovale — that did not properly close up after birth. A blood clot went through that PFO, traveling to his brain and causing the ministroke.
Had Heather given up and let Terry go home, he "probably would have died."
Doctors have since fixed the PFO and Terry is on the mend, but they decided as a couple to tell their story to help others understand the importance of seeking medical attention if things do not seem right.
