'I'm here'

Stroke at age 21 revealed new life to young woman

At 21, Amanda Ray lay in a hospital bed in Los Angeles with the right side of her body, including half of her face, paralyzed from a stroke.

Hospital officials, trying to give her father hope, told him about the great wheelchairs available. Her father, Sterling Ray, refused to accept the grim prognosis that his daughter would never walk again.

"He told them 'You don't know this girl,'" Ray said .

She proved her father right.

Buttressed by strong family support and an iron will, she left her wheelchair behind after six months of grueling work. Although her right foot and hand remain paralyzed, Ray has learned to walk with just a leg brace to stabilize her right ankle.

Ray has regained about 25 percent to 30 percent of her feeling in her right side.

"I'll never be 100 percent but at least I'm here," she said with a smile. "It taught me to appreciate every moment that I have."

Now 24 and a student at Flathead Valley Community College, Ray lives with her family in Whitefish where they had maintained a summer home. In 2005, the family moved here permanently to help Ray recover.

"Montana is such a pretty, healthy place to be," she said. "People are so accepting and giving and nice here."

Ray credits her recovery to her family. Her mother, Donna, provided 24-hour-a-day care in the months immediately after her stroke, hauling her daughter from place to place by her "gait belt."

Her father left a career as an executive producer of commercials and music videos in Los Angeles to relocate to Montana.

"Dad was incredibly successful," Ray said.

Her parents now work in real estate in Whitefish. Her dad also started a business, Sterling Staging Co., that helps people buff up their properties for sale.

According to Ray, her family, including her younger sister Becca and older brother Jameson, has become much closer from facing the changes of the last few years.

With their support and moving here, she overcame both physical and psychological challenges.

"I've really come to terms with 'I'm not perfect,'" she said. "I don't compare myself to other people. I've become comfortable in my own skin."

In April 2004, Ray, then 21, had a different outlook on life.

She recalls that she was impatient and demanded perfection of herself in spite of a brush with a surviving a life-threatening event a few years earlier.

When she was just 15, Ray said she had suffered a brain aneurysm in which a weak spot in a blood vessel balloons out or breaks. Emergency medical treatment pulled her through without impairment.

For a while, she made her health her top priority.

"I was a hypochondriac after my aneurysm," she said. "A slight headache and I would take myself to the hospital."

But as the years passed without more incidents, Ray became complacent. She didn't seek medical attention when she began suffering headaches again in March 2004.

A month later during a Sunday phone conversation with her mother, she lapsed into unconsciousness. Her mother, who lived about two hours away, had no idea what happened. She kept trying to call back.

"My boyfriend at the time came home and found me on the floor," Ray said.

She was semiconscious, speaking like a drunk person and making no sense. Her boyfriend called 911 after consulting with Ray's mother about the symptoms.

She ended up at UCLA Medical Center in the Intensive Care Unit with a diagnosis of a stroke, a cardiovascular event in which blocked blood vessels prevent oxygen and nutrients from reaching part of the brain. Brain cells quickly begin to die, leading to varying degrees of disability or death.

"On my entire right side, I couldn't feel anything or move anything," Ray recalled. "For the first week, I couldn't understand what people were saying to me."

She said she was lucky because she was one of a small percentage of left-handed people with speech function located on the right side of the brain. As a result, the stroke on the left side didn't take her ability to speak.

Ray said she worked hard to regained use of muscles on the right side of her face. Learning to walk again was even more daunting.

It began by learning to sit up, then taking thousands of baby steps toward hundreds of interim goals through months of rehabilitation to leave the confines of a wheelchair. Ray faced pain and setbacks but kept going.

"Now I'm able to walk without a cane," she said. "It's not a sprint, it's a marathon."

Ray looks at her college career in the same way, taking just one or two classes a semester. She said that she has to study harder due to problems she encounters with her short-term memory.

Now a sophomore at Flathead Valley Community College, she intends to transfer to a four-year school to complete a degree in some area of social work.

Before her stroke, she said she wanted to go into nursing, but decided that career would be too physically taxing.

"I can contribute in other ways," she said.

She found a prime opportunity when she and her dad went to Missoula to check out the University of Montana's disability program.

An adviser there asked her to take over a position as a cardiovascular health adviser to the state department of disabilities. She attends task force meetings several times a year to brainstorm ways to help the disabled become more active.

Her face lit up as she spoke of plans to start a stroke survivors support group and to visit hospitals to connect directly with people who aren't coping well with their disabilities.

Ray knows only too well the pain and loneliness they face, even although she said every stroke affects people in different ways.

"A part of me died," Ray said. "I had to go through this grieving process. I know it sound cheesy but what doesn't kill you really does make you stronger."

She finds joy in many aspects of her new life. Ray replaced her former passion for riding and jumping horses with the simple pleasure of grooming the horses.

She also enjoys walking, swimming, writing in her journal and spending time with her family.

"People are disabled after a stroke, but there's life after disability," Ray said. "The more you embrace it, the easier it is to accept it and move forward."

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.