As her students finished their online exam, Arlet Lara got up to make a cafe con leche .
Her 16-year-old son found her on the kitchen floor. First, he called Dad in a panic. Then 911.
“I had a stroke and my life made a 180-degree turn,” Lara told the Miami Herald, recalling the medical scare she experienced in May 2020 in the early months of the COVID pandemic.
“The stroke affected my left side of the body,” the North Miami woman and former high school math teacher said.
Lara, an avid runner and gym goer, couldn’t even walk.
“It was hard,” the 50-year-old mom said.
After years of rehabilitation therapy and a foot surgery, Lara can walk again. But she still struggles with moving.
This summer, she became the first patient in South Florida to get an implant of a new and only FDA-approved nerve stimulation device designed to help ischemic stroke survivors regain movement in their arms and hands.
This first procedure was at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Lara’s rehab was at at the Christine E. Lynn Rehabilitation Center for The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, part of a partnership between Jackson Health System and UHealth.