Patient Travels More Than 1,300 Miles For Mansfield Hospital Neurosurgeon's Expert Care

The hospital is a space no one hopes to wind up in and many manage to avoid for most of their lives. 

But it's easy to see this is a familiar setting for Bridget Kuykendall.

After all, she's already had six surgeries and 16 spinal taps due to a rare disorder that took control of her life more than 20 years ago. 

“We tried to figure out why I had these headaches,” said Kuykendall. “They called them migraines at the time.”

The headaches continued to get worse and become more often. Oddly enough, they always presented with stroke-like symptoms. 

Then, in 2013, Kuykendall suffered an actual stroke. 

She received her diagnosis shortly after: Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension, or IH.

“My brain thinks I have a tumor,” said Kuykendall. “But I don’t. So it’s creating all this excess spinal fluid.”

In layman's terms: IH is a disorder involving increased pressure in the skull and excess spinal fluid around the brain. 

This leads to extreme headaches, nausea, and vision deterioration. 

Kuykendall eventually had brain surgery to insert what's called a shunt into her brain compartment to drain that excess fluid. However, that particular procedure lead to severe complications.

She then found Dr. Bohdan Chopko, current lead neurosurgeon at OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital, through one of her support groups, and hasn't looked back since. 

“I recognized in him right away that he cares," said Kuykendall. "And he really just wants to help you. He’s compassionate. He wants to fix things for people.”

Dr. Chopko has performed multiple surgeries on Kuykendall since 2016, including relocating her shunt after it moved, replacing it, and reinserting it for better position. 

Since Dr. Chopko joined OhioHealth, Kuykendall travels more than 1,300 miles to see him. 

“I’ve told him, I will follow him to mars if he moves to mars,” said Kuykendall. “And he says, ‘Why would I move to Mars?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m just letting you know, that’s how far I’ll go to have you.’ I trust him so much.”

While Dr. Chopko recognizes Kuykendall's recommendation of him as one of the highest forms of compliments, he credits his whole team for creating a positive experience for her. 

“When you have patients coming to you because of word of mouth, that ‘s just such a wonderful feeling because I think all cylinders are firing so to speak when that’s happening,” said Dr. Chopko. “It means that the hospital experience was great, the surgeon experience was great, the nursing staff, the operating room staff, everybody played a role in that in making this something that a patient felt encouraged by. She could’ve gone anywhere in that 1,300 mile span for her care, but she chooses to come here.”

Kuykendall doesn't know how long her current shunt will last her, but she knows she'll travel back to Ohio when she needs it replaced to see Dr. Chopko.