Teacher grateful for her ‘team’ in recovery from stroke

It's been nearly nine months since Julisa Fjeldahl first noticed she was having trouble with her balance.

“It was hot, I thought it was dehydration,” said the 40-year-old New Prague High School teacher. She rested, but was still having the same symptoms the next day.

“I was outside on the phone with my mom, who has a nursing background talking about what was going on,” she said. “After the call, I passed out. When I came to, I couldn’t get up, I had to crawl into the house on my hands and knees,” she recalled.

She didn’t want to scare her children, so she called her husband Jason, who came home and took her to the hospital in New Prague.

“They weren’t sure what it was at first. They did a CT, which came out clean. Initially, they thought it was vertigo, given the symptoms, but to be sure they sent me to Mankato, where they did an MRI.

The diagnosis came as a shock. She had suffered a Brain Stem Stroke.

“A stroke…. I really couldn’t wrap my head around it.” she said. “My mom’s eyes got big, and my husband also was stunned.”

The neurologist immediately told me I must have had had an angel watching out for me. “If the clots had been a little to the left, I would have been totally paralyzed,” she said.

A long journey

Fjeldahl said her journey to recovery has been a slow, but steady success, but also one that is not yet finished. She credits the success to the team of therapists she worked with at Mayo Clinic Health System in New Prague: physical therapist John Masberg, occupational therapist Tami Novak and speech therapist Jennifer Dull. They consulted with her neurologist, Vanessa Tseng at Mayo’s Mankato clinic.

She also spent a week and a half at Courage Kenny Center in the Twin Cities, where she worked with Dr. Diane Chappuis, who specializes in helping stroke victims recover.

“Dr. Chappuis said when she met me, she could tell that I thought I was going to be done with this quickly. She told me right away my recovery would take six to eight months minimum.”

“I pushed hard, sometimes too hard,” she said.

Talking to Fjeldahl today, you would be hard-pressed to see any signs of a stroke.

“Even though I seem fine, I still get.....

To see more on this story pick up the March 9, 2017 print edition of The New Prague Times.

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