Health Care Heroes 2009

In 1981, when a bulging blood vessel, or aneurysm, burst in his brain, then-32-year-old John Mastel’s life changed forever. At that time, about 97 percent of ruptured aneurysms were fatal. But fortunately, Mastel’s wife and brother-in-law rushed him to St. Paul’s Bethesda Hospital before he bled out. There, doctors stopped the flow by closing the broken blood vessel with a metal clip.

Within three weeks, Mastel experienced a second stroke when he threw a blood clot that caused a blockage in his brain.

Although Mastel survived these two traumatic brain injuries, he did not come through them unscathed. His two strokes left him with a number of physical deficits, including a loss of smell and taste and a loss of control of when he laughs or cries. Previously, he had worked as a police officer and a construction professional; but those careers were no longer options.

After he was released from the hospital, Mastel lived a very sheltered existence. At that time, most stroke support groups in the Twin Cities were targeted toward the elderly. But Mastel was in his prime years, and he was looking for guidance on living a fulfulling, active life. Via a local radio program, he heard about a new support group for younger stroke survivors through Courage Center, a Minneapolis-based rehabilitation and research center. He joined right away.

“They met in Bloomington, and a number of us lived in the White Bear Lake/Hugo area,” Mastel recalls. “Driving down there during the winter was horrendous, but we did it because it offered us so much, just to be around other folks in our age group with a shared desire to get back into society.”

Courage Center also offered a training program that taught people to become stroke peer counselors who made one-on-one hospital visits. Mastel signed up, but almost immediately, he also began to volunteer at the very hospital where he had begun his own recovery.

“I started the Stroke Support Group [at Bethesda] in October of 1983,” he says. “If you don’t mind a pun, I like to say it was a stroke of fate. They wanted someone so badly that I actually started the group before I had finished my training.”

He did finish it in April 1984, and before long he was also the hospital’s sole peer visitor. In the late 1980s, he began training other stroke survivors to do the same work. He has continued to lead Bethesda’s support group and peer visitor program for more than 25 years. Two years ago, he also began co-facilitating a specialized brain aneurysm support group at St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul. All of these roles he performs without pay.