CLEVELAND -- Surviving a stroke is no easy task, and timing is crucial: A stroke victim must get the right medicine right away.

So, imagine how serious it would be to have a stroke on an airplane, in the middle of a cross-country flight.

NewsChannel5's Alicia Booth reported on one local woman who experienced this ordeal and how she is recovering from it.

As a highly successful 40-year-old attorney and mother of two, Jean Robertson didn't have time to be sick -- she had a plane to catch.

"I started to feel a headache come on but I suffer from migraine headaches, so I immediately rationalized it as a migraine," Robertson said.

Then, her vision seemed to be off.

"Not blurry, but really squirrelly. It was just really unusual. My eye had a life of its own. It would just wander and look around and again, I'm thinking, 'This darn headache,'" Robertson said.

She also remembers having trouble with her purse and her briefcase.

"They would just fall off. I'd pull them back and they would fall off again, and I'm cursing at my bags, not realizing that there's a connection for all these symptoms," she said.

The symptoms continued after checking in and boarding the America West flight headed for the West Coast.

Robertson said she chatted for quite a while with the businessman next to her.

"He kind of looked at me and said, 'Excuse me?' And apparently at some point in our conversation I stopped making sense," she said. "I go like this to touch my face intuitively and I realize my entire head is numb."

Fortunately, there was a doctor on the plane who helped convince the pilot and the airline that an emergency landing was necessary to save Robertson's life.

The pilot did just that, and it was just one act in a string of events in November 2005 that saved Robertson's life.

"So, I had this first class ticket on a plane that was supposed to take me to Palm Springs, but in the meantime, I had a stroke and landed in Kansas City, and ended up in one of the best facilities in the country for stroke and brain injuries," Robertson said.

Seven weeks after that experience, Robertson was telling her story to 600 women at the Go Red For Women breakfast last year.

Several doctors have told Robertson that had the pilot not agreed to land when he did, she would have died or been severely handicapped.

If you have any questions about heart disease and stroke, call the American Heart Association's Go Red For Women hot line at 216-619-5144.

Also, be sure to check out NewsNet5.com's Go Red For Women section and Alicia Booth's Go Red Blog for more information.