6 | Health Matters: Providence Little Company of Mary San Pedro and Torrance
A Team
Dedicated
to Recovery
A heroic response by
the ER team saved Boyd
Jeffery after a stroke, but
it was the specialists at
the acute rehab unit who
gave him his life back.
B
oyd E. Jeffery, an energetic 54-year-
old Manhattan Beach real estate
agent known on social media as Boyd
the Broker, had a hemorrhagic stroke
in December 2021. He says the care he
received at Providence Little Company of
Mary "clearly saved my life."
Boyd's Monday morning had started
routinely enough. He dropped off his
15-year-old son, Kai, at school. But within
an hour, Boyd recalls, "I started to get a
knife-like pain in the back of my neck."
When he described his pain and dizziness
to his wife, Xiomara, she urged him to call
911. The ambulance arrived just as Boyd
lost consciousness.
He was rushed to the comprehensive
stroke care center at Providence Little
Company of Mary Torrance, where
the center's medical director, stroke
neurologist Allison Arch, MD, and her team
were waiting for him. When it was clear
from a CT scan that Boyd had bleeding in
the brain, neurosurgeon Jian Guan, MD,
performed surgery to relieve the pressure
that was causing his symptoms and
threatening his life. Later, neurosurgeon
Walavan Sivakumar, MD, performed a
second surgery to place a temporary drain
to control Boyd's intracranial pressure.
Shane
O'Donnell
Photography
