BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (WTNH) — New technology at St. Vincent’s Medical Center has already saved the lives of stroke victims.

Mimi Jacob, a 56-year-old woman from Easton, is one of them.

Doctors at the hospitals used the state-of-the-art vascular suite to quickly act when she had a stroke in front of her husband.

“One of my sentences came out as a complete string of grunts and moans, and we both said, ‘What was that?’ and he said, ‘I think you’re having a stroke,’ jokingly,” Jacob said.

Jacob, who also has breast cancer, was paralyzed on one side, and was rushed to St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport. There, she was treated with the state’s only biplane neuroendovascular suite by Hartford HealthCare neurosurgeon Akli Zetchi.

Brain images from that day shows the blockage. The technology means that doctors don’t need to open the head or body to treat the vascular problems. Instead, they use image guidance.

“It’s all done through access to the blood vessels in the wrist and the groan,” Zetchi said.

It’s a safer way of doing things.

“If you have open surgery — a craniotomy — it’s a much longer stay in the hospital, and the longer you stay in the hospital, the more subject you are to complications,” Zetchi said.

For Jacobs, that meant treating her 10 minutes from start to finish, retrieving the blood clot that was causing the problem.

When she got home, she realized that things could have been a lot worse.

“Somebody’s looking out for me,” she said.