My stroke, and my continuous journey of healing
By Minnie Watkins
Hello, my name is Minnie Watkins. I'm 60 years old. At the age of 56, in 2020 during the heart of the pandemic, I had an ischemic stroke. The stroke affected the left side of my body. I had trouble walking, speaking, and for the first week I had no use of my left arm and hand. I spent five weeks in the hospital and three and a half weeks in rehab; there I received five hours of occupational, physical, speech and cognitive therapy daily. I had to learn to walk again using a walker, then a four-pronged cane, then a regular cane. While in rehab I was transported everywhere in a wheelchair, as I was a high fall risk.
After rehab, I continued outpatient therapy with both OT and PT. About a year after the stroke, my therapist and I noticed the spasticity in my left hand that seemed to have come out of nowhere. My fingers and wrist were noticeably stiffer; it felt like rubber bands were attached to my fingers and pulling my hand shut when I was trying to open it. We first tried a stretching and strengthening device, which worked until I fell and sprained my arm and hand. The device was painful to use, so the spasticity started to progress. It was at this time my neurologist thought I would benefit from botulinum toxin treatments. It was about two and a half years post-stroke when I had my first injection. In two weeks, just as the doctor said, my fingers and wrist became increasingly flexible.
An interesting thing about having a stroke is that you don't know how the stroke has fully affected you until you try to use those muscles that allowed you to exercise skills that you had perfected. I am an artist, more specifically a portrait artist. I have traveled the U.S. doing art exhibitions. When I came home after my stroke, I noticed that the friends that I have known for 20 to 30 years did not look like themselves to me. It was then I realized that part of my brain that controls facial recognition had also been affected, as well as my hand and eye coordination. I couldn't trace or draw anything accurately.
After many years of being a self-starter and working on tight deadlines, I noticed my attention span and my ability to stay on task was extremely mentally and physically challenging. I have been in the choir all of my life and interpreting pitches and tones was off. At times while pronouncing certain syllables, to myself I sounded as if I was stuttering or was tongue tied. Trying to read a paragraph or a line of text was difficult.
Since 2020 I have been creating a visual journal on canvas that depicts my journey and faith in God through the pandemic losing my brother to covid, having a stroke, and my continuous journey and my healing. With time many things that I was not able to do, now I can.
Spasticity is a common post-stroke condition. To better understand and manage this condition, visit stroke.org/spasticity.