INSIDE EDITION speaks to the woman whose fiancé caught her near-fatal stroke—with the help of his iPhone.
In the video shot by her fiancé, Diane McPeters may look and sound drunk—but she's not. She was actually suffering a massive stroke. And amazingly, it was the cell phone video that helped save her life.
"Was the right side of your face a little numb this morning?" asked her fiancé, Dave O'Neal, in the video.
"No," replied McPeters.
At 8:00 am, McPeters awoke feeling tired and sluggish. Her droopy face and slurred speech told her fiancé right away that something was wrong, but McPeters refused to go to the hospital.
Then, at 3:00 pm, they went out to the porch. The stroke was rapidly worsening.
O'Neal took out his iPhone and began recording.
"I would like you to speak into the camera," said O'Neal in the video, "to me, it looks like you're talking out of the left side of your mouth."
Incredibly, McPeters was smoking a cigarette, still refusing to go to the hospital.
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing," O'Neal told INSIDE EDITION.
"I've threatened you to call 911, is that correct? Why should I not do that?" O'Neal asks McPeters in the video.
"Because—just give it time," replied McPeters.
"I was thinking what I wanted to say, but couldn't say it," McPeters told INSIDE EDITION.
Finally, O'Neal had enough and called 911.
"I was definitely scared for her life," said O'Neal.
McPeters was raced to the Medical Center of Plano, outside Dallas. The prognosis was grim.
"She had a devastating brain attack," said Dr. Vallabh Janardhan.
McPeters was wheeled into surgery, where Dr. Janardhan and his surgical team were waiting.
"You have a huge area that's not getting blood flow," Dr. Janardhan told McPeters.
When dealing with a stroke, time is crucial. In most cases, doctors can only guess when a stroke occured. But O'Neal had the exact timeline on his cell phone.
"It was absolutely critical for me to know when the symptoms started," said Dr. Janardhan.
Dr. Janardhan showed McPeters how he snaked a micro-thin catheter through her body, up to her brain to remove the clot, and put her on the road to what he expects will be a full recovery.
McPeters has two special people to thank for her survival—her doctor and her fiancé.
"I owe him my life," McPeters said of her soon-to-be husband.
For more information on symptons of Stroke, please visit the National Stroke Association.
