Jeanette's Story
Jeanette Vargas held up an index finger at her therapist.
During a session, she’d wobbled. A harness hooked to the ceiling in the West Gables Rehabilitation Hospital therapy gym was holding her upright. She attempted a skill she hadn’t had to perfect since she was first learning to crawl -- standing in place. When her balance crumbled, her therapist moved to help, but met Jeanette’s upraised digit.
“I will do it,” Jeanette told the therapist. The 52-year-old culinary arts teacher then righted herself on her own.
“I’m a goal person,” she explained afterward, laughing. “Sometimes, I need time to think.”
But the weeks leading up to that moment had afforded Jeanette little time for thought, and never before had the quiet place in her mind where she keeps logic and courage felt so threatened. She’d been singing in the choir at her church in Miami when she felt funny, as if the more she tried to hold her body still and standing, the more it felt as though she was toppling over. She stepped away from her fellow singers, and someone at the church dialed 911.
At Larkin Palm Springs Hospital, Jeanette learned she’d suffered a stroke in her basal ganglia, a portion of the brain that governs, among other things, emotion. During two weeks at the hospital, Jeanette discovered she could barely walk. She’d lost strength in her right side and had trouble swallowing food.
As she lay there, she didn’t give in to the panic that was starting to rise. Instead Jeanette turned her thoughts to Genyveve and Lucas -- 2 years old and 1 year old, respectively -- her grandchildren. They were coming to visit in a few weeks, and she’d get to hold them.
“I’m alive,” Jeanette told herself. “I have to do it.”
Doctors had recommended West Gables Rehabilitation Hospital because it was close to her home and offered intensive, inpatient rehab led by a physician. Jeanette would receive help from a team of physical, speech, recreational and occupational therapists; nurses, a pharmacist and a dietitian.
She found she had access to leading-edge equipment, like the exoskeleton, a robotic device that looks like mechanical legs attached to a backpack. With the help of her physical therapist, Jeanette slipped it on and the device replaced the missing strength in her legs, allowing her to stand, walk and slowly rebuild lost muscle.
Her therapist attached electrodes to her triceps and bicep muscles and pulsed them with a mild electrical current to help rebuild the lost strength in her arms.
Then, Jeanette’s occupational therapist helped her develop strategies to handle day-to-day activities. When she first left the acute care hospital, Jeanette needed help eating, brushing her teeth, using the toilet, bathing and getting dressed. The balance and strengthening exercises helped her on her way, and the occupational therapist offered modified approaches to these simple daily tasks. For example, using grab handles to climb on and off the toilet or using a reaching device to pick up items too far away to grasp.
Jeanette used different varieties of harnesses to hold her up, while her physical therapist had her perform exercises like standing, walking on treadmills and carrying things. One exercise, for example, had her march on a treadmill holding bags filled with groceries. One of the tasks she hoped to perform at home involved simply lugging the week’s shopping from the car to the kitchen.
As she marched on the treadmill, staff in the gym turned on music. The song “Defying Gravity” from the musical “Wicked” played. Plodding along with her bags of groceries, Jeanette listened to the lyrics.
“Something has changed within mе
Something is not the same
I’m through with playing by
The rules of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It’s time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap.”
The vocal made her think of the home she was marching toward – her old job that she hoped to return to in the fall, board games with her family and movie nights. And most of all Jeanette envisioned the two babies she longed to cradle again. She was doing it, she told herself. “This is my life,” she thought. “I have to get back to it. I can live.”
She began to cry. And as the song continued, she glanced at her therapist and noticed tears in the therapist’s eyes as well.
Jeanette was doing it. In 24 days in the rehabilitation hospital, her balance and strength were returning. She’d gone from needing help to get dressed, brush her teeth, use the bathroom, bathe and eat, to being able to perform almost all of those tasks on her own. And the tasks she still needed help with – bathing and putting on her shoes, for example – required far less support than when she first arrived.
Her husband and four children took part in West Gables Rehabilitation Hospital’s Care Partner program. They attended sessions with therapists learning how to help Jeanette at home when needed.
After just under a month, Jeanette returned home and reunited with her children and grandchildren. She’d wanted to make a trip to Orlando with the family that summer, but decided it was too much.
Work is still a question mark for the fall, but she hopes to return soon.
Meanwhile, she’ll keep pushing toward forward, relying on the inner well of strength that not even the stroke could touch. She continues therapy through an outpatient facility and has become even more independent.
Jeanette has gotten back to the life she loved, but when she stops and thinks about it something is different, like the lyrics to “Defying Gravity” pointed out. Something did, in fact, change within her.
“I changed in all ways,” she said. “I did not have any idea how important I am and how precious life is.”