The day everything changed: Dan Gilbert opens up on his stroke recovery

For a smart man like Dan Gilbert it is amazing that the stroke professionals he was working with convinced him of the tyranny of low expectations. He should have been screaming at the stroke hospital president why nothing was available to get to 100% recovery. If powerful people like this are bamboozled, then normal people like me have no chance to change the stroke world for the better. 

The day everything changed: Dan Gilbert opens up on his stroke recovery

On the Saturday night before Memorial Day, Dan Gilbert and his wife, Jennifer, were hosting friends on the roof of his downtown Detroit apartment at the Vinton Building.

High-powered lights were beaming from nearby Hart Plaza as concertgoers danced to the blaring beat of electronic music at the annual Movement Music Festival along the Detroit riverfront.

That's when Dan Gilbert started "seeing double people."

"I thought it had to do with (the lights)," the Quicken Loans Inc. founder recalled.

It didn't.

In attendance at the Gilberts' party that night was Steven Adamczyk, an emergency room physician who coaches their youngest son's basketball team.

The doctor urged Gilbert to go to a hospital, even as the self-made billionaire resisted.

"I told them I'm not going anywhere, but they insisted I go to Beaumont," Gilbert said.

Sometime after midnight, Gilbert’s driver drove him from downtown Detroit to Beaumont Health’s Royal Oak hospital. Adamczyk accompanied Gilbert to the hospital.

"So they basically saved my life — this guy and my wife — because if I didn't go, it would have been a problem," Gilbert said in an exclusive interview with Crain's.

Last week, Gilbert granted Crain's the first interview he's given since suffering an ischemic stroke in the right side of his brain over the Memorial Day weekend that caused temporary paralysis of his left arm and leg.

Gilbert plans to make his first public speech since the stroke Friday at the Crain's Newsmakers of the Year luncheon at MGM Grand Detroit casino, where he'll be honored with the first Newsmaker Hall of Fame award for his frequent appearances on the list of top Newsmakers in Crain's 35-year history.

In 2019, Gilbert's real estate company was making new development announcements and Quicken Loans was continuing to dominate home mortgages. But much of that was overshadowed by his stroke in late May and the months of relative silence from Gilbert's inner circle about his physical condition.
Nearly nine months later, Gilbert is focused on regaining physical strength and motor skills that were lost by what he says was a blood clot in his carotid artery that cut off oxygen-rich blood to his brain.

For a man who owns a professional basketball team, the stroke was both a near-death and humbling experience.

"If that artery was blocked more minutes than it was, it would have been much worse," said Gilbert, who turned 58 last month.

The stroke has upended the life of a fast-charging businessman who, over the past decade, had become a transformational figure in Detroit and influential power broker in Michigan.

"When you have a stroke, here's the problem with it: Everything is hard. Everything," Gilbert said. "Like you wake up, getting out of bed is hard, going to the bathroom is hard, sitting down eating at a table is hard. You name it. You don't get a break. You're like trapped in your own body."

The change in Gilbert's life was as sudden as it gets.

Just a day before his stroke, Gilbert's political influence at the state Capitol reached a crescendo when his lobbyists finished engineering the Legislature's passage of a major overhaul of Michigan's auto insurance law. It was the culmination of years of work by Gilbert and his business organization to lower the cost of insuring vehicles in Detroit.

Hours before gathering with friends on his rooftop patio, Gilbert sent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer text messages pledging to help her get a long-term road-funding deal with the Legislature, according to aides to the governor and businessman.

The ensuing hours ended up being a life-changing experience that Gilbert says he's "very lucky" to have survived to tell.

Chad LIvengood/Crain's Detroit Business

The Vinton Building, where Gilbert first began experiencing symptoms leading up to his stroke.

‘Could be worse'

During the May 25 gathering at Gilbert’s apartment, Adamczyk said he recognized Gilbert having “intermittent symptoms” associated with stroke: Facial asymmetry, arm drift and speech difficulty. He advised Gilbert that he should go to Beaumont. Adamczyk said he rode with Gilbert to the hospital.

Gilbert said a Beaumont doctor implanted seven stents inside his carotid artery to open the blood vessel.

His company has previously said Gilbert suffered a stroke at Beaumont's Royal Oak hospital on Sunday, May 26, that prompted an emergency catheter procedure, which is how cardiovascular surgeons implant tiny metal stents inside arteries to restore blood flow.

The health scare has left Gilbert physically thinner, though he's sporting a thicker, white beard. His speech is clear, if quiet.

Gilbert uses a wheelchair to get around the mortgage company's One Campus Martius headquarters, alongside a black Lab service dog named Cowboy.

"Cowboy, place," Gilbert said at the start of the interview, instructing the dog to lie on a special blanket on the floor of his office overlooking Campus Martius. "Go to your place and hang out."

During the interview, Gilbert attempted to move his left arm, which rests in a sling, as he sat in the wheelchair at a small conference table.

"There's exercises that we're doing where I can move it from here and up to here and there's a ball there," Gilbert said as he used his dominant right hand to move his left arm around the table.

"I can grab a ball and drop it into a box sometimes," he said. "But not always."

Those are minor setbacks, considering Gilbert was immobile "dead weight" the day after the stroke, he said.

As for recovery, he said, "the (left) leg is almost there," Gilbert said. "I can walk with a cane and all that. It just takes a little longer in the arm."

And "it could always be worse," he added. "(Like) people who get a stroke that takes out their whole body."

Shirley Ryan AbilityLab

Dan Gilbert spent weeks at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, ranked as the top stroke rehab center in the country.

‘Underpaid' nurses

Gilbert has rarely been seen in public since spending eight weeks last summer at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago, a $550 million state-of-the-art rehabilitation facility just a few blocks from Navy Pier and Lake Michigan.

Formerly known as the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, U.S. News and World Report rates the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab as the country's top neurological rehab center.

"It was a great place," Gilbert said. "In fact, we need something like that here in Detroit. It's one of the things we'll be working on."

The experience and level of care at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab taught a fintech mogul who pays Cleveland Cavaliers basketball players millions of dollars a few things about talent in the health care industry.

"First of all, the hardest-working people in the world are these nurses and nurse assistants," Gilbert said. "I have no idea what they get paid, but I'm certain they're underpaid — because you can't pay them enough.

"I mean, none of us would do for 20 minutes what they do nine hours a day every day of the week," he added.

Gilbert said he doesn't know how he could bring a similar facility to Detroit, but it's on his mind.

"They're just thoughts right now," he said.

Forbes values Gilbert's fortune at $7 billion.

It's not lost on one of Michigan's wealthiest men that he's got access to better rehabilitation therapists than most people do.

He spends three to four hours daily working with occupational and physical therapists inside his Franklin home.

"I start thinking about, imagine people who just don't have any of these resources. What do they do?" Gilbert asked. "I mean, insurance does not usually cover most of the … rehab from a stroke. Maybe some of it, but not most of it."

Gracious Gilbert

Since being hospitalized, Gilbert said he's remained in contact with the CEOs of his various companies, particularly Quicken Loans CEO Jay Farner, who has worked for Gilbert for 24 years.

Gilbert's lieutenants have gone about executing major business decisions in his absence, such as forging a partnership with New York real estate developer Stephen Ross on an innovation center for UM graduate students, buying the Courtyard by Marriott from General Motors Co. Quicken Loans also agreed to pay $32.5 million to resolve a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit over the company's past mortgage business practices, a lawsuit Gilbert had previously said he'd never settle.

"It demonstrates the importance of a culture," Farner told Crain's. "Because if you're rudderless, then you can be in trouble."

After the New Year, Gilbert started coming into the office one or two days a week, particularly re-engaging on the construction of a skyscraper at the former Hudson's department store site on Woodward Avenue, Farner said.

Gilbert praised Farner's leadership in his absence — and then paused.

"You know, we've got great people everywhere," he said. "If this teaches you anything, it teaches you gratitude, right?"

Every minute counts

For a man with many titles, Dan Gilbert now carries the title of stroke survivor.

During the interview, he rattled off the American Stroke Association's four-letter acronym for spotting signs of a stroke: F.A.S.T.

F stands for face drooping.

A is for arm weakness or numbness.

S stands for slurred speech.

"And T is time, which means get your ass to the hospital," Gilbert said. "It's really about minutes."