Felicia Pickett
Felicia Pickett lives a joyful life.
Singing in her church choir. Taking Zumba, belly dancing and salsa dancing classes. Decorating for parties with balloon art for friends and family members.
“If there’s a dance out there, I’ll try it,” said the lifelong Bakersfield resident and mother of two grown sons.
Ironically, one of the most life-changing events began while celebrating a friend.
In 2019 at a work colleague’s goingaway party, Pickett started to feel ill. She thought it was indigestion after indulging in too much festive food.
Uncharacteristically, she left the party early; once home, her symptoms worsened. Her then 29-year-old son, Michael Redd Jr., finally convinced her to go to the doctor when she started to feel “delirious” and her arms began to hurt.
Once at an urgent care clinic, the doctor informed Pickett she was having a heart attack and called an ambulance to take her to the nearest hospital. Her son watched helplessly as his mom was whisked away on a stretcher.
Doctors performed an emergency stent surgery and she stayed in the hospital for three days.
Although a specific cause for her heart attack was never diagnosed, she was under a lot of personal and professional stress at the time.
“We tend to be superwomen; it’s ingrained in us that we have to do everything,” Pickett said.
Since her event, Pickett has completely revamped her diet.
“I eat so many more vegetables,” she said. “I’ve learned how to cook, and I’m cooking vegetables I’ve never cooked before.”
Although active prior to her event, Pickett has added more exercise, including jump-roping, which she and her son do together. She’s reminded of the impact her heart attack had on him, too, and why it’s important to help loved ones deal with the aftermath of witnessing a traumatic experience like hers.
“They are going through something, too,” she said. “Sit with them, talk to them, let them express themselves. It helps to process.”
Now she’s using her experience to urge others to pay attention to their body.
“If you feel something different from what you normally feel, get checked.”
Katherine Wolf
As a speech therapist at Encompass Health Rehab Hospital in Bakersfield, Katherine Wolf’s patients are often recovering from stroke.
She reminds them to keep fighting to regain their speech. And that she is on their team — because as a stroke survivor, she knows exactly where they’ve been.
“Every day seeing my patients fighting for their own lives and quality of life has helped me stay positive,” she said.
Wolf survived her first stroke in 2018, only seven weeks after giving birth to her older son, Everett. Just 24 years old, she was diagnosed with intracranial stenosis, a narrowing of the blood vessels in her brain.
Over the next four years, she survived nine more strokes and underwent a 12-hour brain surgery to revascularize her brain using a portion of her carotid artery.
“I was in and out of the hospital for 100 days. I would get better and have a stroke; I’d get better and have a stroke,” she said. “I spent my first Mother’s Day in the hospital. I just wanted a normal motherhood experience.”
Through her own recovery working with therapists to regain her speech, she decided to become a speech therapist when doctors told her she wouldn’t be able to go back to work as a middle school teacher.
“My speech therapist told me I’d be a good speech therapist — that I have something to give,” Wolf said. “And I have the knowledge and experience that most other speech therapists don’t have.”
She spent the last four years earning a second bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in speech therapy. But the road to her dream career hasn’t been easy. She underwent another brain surgery four weeks into graduate school.
Her condition doesn’t have a cure yet, and it’s progressive. The goal, she says, is for the brain revascularization to last for 15 to 20 years, at which point she’ll need another brain surgery.
For now, she’s focused on spending time with her family. She and her husband, Steven, welcomed a second child, Rebekah, to their family in 2019.
“We’ll go on drives into the mountains, get ice cream, pile up on the family couch and watch movies together,” she said.
And she’s got a goal of earning her Ph.D. She’s currently studying to get a certified brain injury specialist certification and in March is presenting research on using supported conversation for adults with aphasia at the California Speech Language Hearing Association.
Wolf credits the support of her husband in helping her recovery.
“My husband has stood by me through it all,” she said. “It’s been just as hard on him as it has for me. Caregivers have just as hard of time as survivors do. I’m so lucky to have a man who is still here.”
And, of course, the support of her speech therapists.
“They really showed me that I am capable of healing and being just as good as I was, if not better in some ways,” Wolf said.
For her patients she hopes her experience can help them push through the challenges of recovery.
“It’s OK to be angry and upset and frustrated that this has not only changed your life, but will continue to change your life,” she said. “Grieve your old life. And just keep fighting. There may be days when there doesn’t seem to be anything to fight for. But find days where there is something to fight for. You need a lifeline for those days.”