Life After a Stroke

Kay Wolfe uses her experience to help others at The Shepherd Center

Kay Wolfe

By Clare S. Richie

Kay Wolfe is a thriving entrepreneur who lives in Midtown with her husband Robert and dog Fritz. She also happened to survive a severe stroke more than a decade ago. She now uses her humor and competitive spirit “to not be beaten by this” and to inspire other stroke survivors.

“I do everything that I used to do – but I do it slower and different. I am at every Clemson football game. I might have to sit in a different seat, but I will die before I miss a ballgame,”

Wolfe said.

Her life journey took a detour on a typical morning in August of 2005.

“Sitting at my [home office] desk early one morning, I could tell that something was suddenly very, very wrong. I knew what it was, so I called my husband immediately and said, ‘I’m having a stroke can you come home cause I’m going to have a problem here in a minute’,” Wolfe recalled.

A stroke is the rapid loss of brain function from a hemorrhage or blockage in the brain. Symptoms can include dizziness, paralysis on one side of your body or face, and sudden and severe headaches. With prompt treatment brain cells can be saved. Every minute counts.

“I knew I was at risk, because I have a brain arteriovenous malformation, a congenital birth defect that’s a bad nest of vessels in my brain. In 1998, I had a small bleed without any lasting damage,” Wolfe said.

Wolfe’s husband was already en route to work so he called 911 and raced over to Northside Hospital’s Emergency Room.

“We said our, ‘I love yous and goodbyes.’ As I was hanging up, I could hear the sirens and thought this is going to be fine. When I got to the hospital, it wasn’t fine,” Wolfe said.

After nearly a week in ICU, she could sit up and achieve other milestones. With her medical needs stabilized, Wolfe was discharged to The Shepherd Center to start her brain injury rehabilitation.

“When this happened I was in a dark place. I thought to myself, you can curl up in a ball and cry and die or you can live like this and see how it ends. To do that I had to work my butt off,” Wolfe said.

She made progress, but developed a bad case of spasticity. Damage to her brain was blocking messages to her muscles causing her arms and legs to cramp up, like a bad charley horse. She tried Botox for two years, but that wasn’t a sustainable solution.

“My muscles were always tense and flexing. I couldn’t walk, sit, dress or do anything,” Wolfe said.

Her doctor at Shepherd Center suggested a relatively new technology called Intrathecal Baclofen Therapy (ITB). This required implanting