After surviving two strokes, young Haslet mom celebrates Mother’s Day

Two devastating strokes put Kellie Whitton in a fight for her life at age 27.

The first paralyzed the right side of her body, the start of an unexpected medical journey that left her wondering if she’d ever get married and raise a family.

“We actually thought we were going to lose her,” said Sharon Doss, her mother.

A major artery to her brain was constricted, doctors found, because she had a rare neurological disorder called moyamoya disease.

“It was totally out of the blue,” said Whitton, a nurse. “That night in March that all this happened, I had never had any kind of problems or anything.”

After two brain surgeries and grueling physical therapy, Whitton has overcome all of it. She dated, got engaged and married her husband, who supported her through it all.

She gave birth to her son, Grayson, and will celebrate her second Mother’s Day today.

And she’s a nurse again at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth, where she monitors patients who are undergoing testing for heart and other chronic health problems.

“I think that’s really benefited me in my nursing career. They start to open up to you more,” Whitton said. “It’s part of that mind, body, spirit healing and you’re relating to them on a personal level.”

‘I couldn’t speak’

Whitton and her sister Emily were enjoying sushi in Fort Worth late one night in March 2012 when her right arm went numb. At first, she thought it was an allergic reaction to the sushi.

Then the arm became completely immobile. Panicking, her sister drove her to the hospital where an MRI showed she’d had a stroke. That night, she had a second stroke, a major one.

“The next morning when I woke up I couldn’t move my leg or my whole right side,” Whitton said. “I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move my hand and I couldn’t walk.”

This was her darkest hour, as family members prepared for the worst. Her family all wondered how something like this could happen to someone so healthy.

Just a year earlier, she graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington with a nursing degree, and just months before the stroke she got her first nursing job.

“It’s hard to talk about,” Whitton said. “We didn’t know what was going to happen. It was a really terrible time.”

‘I was basically helpless’

After a week in intensive care, she was transferred to Zale Lipshy University Hospital in Dallas.

There, Dr. Babu Welch, a neurosurgeon at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, ran tests and found the source: Blood vessels at the base of her brain were being constricted because of moyamoya disease.

The disease can be hereditary, but Whitton said no one else in her family has had it.

Blood flow did improve through treatment so Welch decided to hold off on performing brain surgery. Whitton was released from the hospital 33 days after the strokes.

She began physical therapy and moved in with her parents, putting her young life on pause.

“It was devastating to see her like that,” Doss said. “She couldn’t walk or talk.”

But she persevered through the therapy, repeating exercises over and over to regain strength and relearn basic skills.

“I was basically helpless and I hated it,” she said. “My mother, sister and friend Sarah had to help me do everything, from getting dressed to toiletry needs. I tried to do as much as I could by myself, but you can only do so much when half your body doesn’t work.”

After months of recovery, her friends set her up on a blind date with a guy named Adam Whitton. He wanted to take her to a Texas Rangers game. She was able to walk, albeit slowly and with the help of a brace and a cane.

“I said to myself, ‘I am not going to use a cane on my first date with this guy,’ ” she said. “Luckily, we didn’t have to walk a lot. The seats were really close.”

Still, she wasn’t sure he would make a second date because of her condition. But to her surprise, he told her he would see her again and they ended up dating. By October 2013, they were engaged.

“He’s the kindest person I’ve ever met,” she said. “It just showed me that there are good people in the world. It’s what inside that counts, I know that’s cliche but it’s true.”

‘I just started crying’

Nearly two years after the stroke, Whitton went in for an MRI checkup to make sure blood was flowing properly through the arteries.

The arteries were constricted again, and she needed surgery as soon as possible.

“At that point, I just started crying,” she said. “Nobody wants to have brain surgery, and especially not six weeks before their wedding.”

Welch made a 4-inch incision just slightly in front of her ear to reach the artery, which is behind the eye and under the brain. The three-hour surgery is risky and rare but Welch has performed it successfully more than 40 times.

They used an artery from her scalp to bypass her middle cerebral artery, which had the blockage.

“She was going to have another stroke on the other side if we didn’t do it,” Welch said.

Typically, patients have part of their head shaved for the procedure but Welch made an exception for her.

“My hair is really thin and Dr. Welch was able to part it and go in through the hairline,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I really love Dr. Welch, because he is so hands-on. I completely trusted him with everything and his team.”

Still, the surgery left her with headaches and nausea and forced her eye to swell shut.

‘He’s such a blessing’

The wedding went on as planned in a pecan orchard in Aurora, a small community in Wise County. They had three bridesmaids and a junior bridesmaid, Whitton’s stepdaughter McKenzie.

A dream that once seemed impossible had come true.

Then on March 18, 2015, she gave birth to a son, Grayson Neil Welch Whitton. After all the hard times the family had experienced in past Marches, they had reason to celebrate the month.

But a few months after his birth, another MRI revealed Whitton had more blood flow problems, this time on the right side of her brain. In June, Welch performed another successful surgery.

“This time I just snapped right back,” she said. “I knew I had a newborn baby who needed my attention. The scars healed really well. When you look at me, you can’t even tell that I’ve had brain surgery.”

Welch said that Whitton’s recovery has been remarkable but that it will be a lifelong battle.

“These are patients that we have to watch pretty much their whole lives,” he said. “But she’s a story you never forget because of her age and how healthy she was. You’re not supposed to have as stroke when you’re that young.”

Whitton spent this Mother’s Day with ehr family, rejoicing in how far she’s come and the joy of having a toddler who is just learning to walk around.

“He’s such a blessing. He’s been a really great addition to our family,” Whitton said.

This story was originally published May 7, 2016 at 11:39 AM with the headline "After surviving two strokes, young Haslet mom celebrates Mother’s Day."