Artist Jared Hankins noticed how much he enjoyed covering his canvases with countless clouds in countless shades of black and white. Another sudden favorite was detailing every dip and climb of rollercoasters that would make all but the most stoic scream.
He wasn’t sure why. Then it dawned on him.
“These subjects were metaphors for the previous 10 years of my life and what I’d been through,” he said.
That decade started on July 8, 2006 – when he had a stroke.
The night before, Hankins – then a 31-year-old newlywed – had hosted an event at his Denver gallery. He had a couple of beers with clients and felt fine when he got home. But when he woke up that Saturday morning, he had an excruciating headache, as if he had a hangover.
His wife, Alison, teased him for drinking too much then left to go to the grocery store. Jared went into the kitchen and poured a bowl of cereal.
His spoon kept falling out of his hand. He wandered to the couch and fell asleep.
When Alison came home, Jared woke up and followed her into the kitchen. His hands were trembling. They were so out of control that when he reached for his keys on the counter, he missed them by a good 6 to 8 inches.
“Something is really wrong,” he thought.
Then Alison turned around and looked at him. The blood drained from her face, leaving her looking a strange shade of white. Jared tried speaking but had trouble because his tongue had started to swell. It was time to get to the hospital.
In the emergency room, doctors asked questions: Did he know where he was? Who was president of the United States? What year was it? Between MRIs, CT scans and other tests, the questions continued: Can you smile real big? Can you squeeze my finger? Can you lift an arm?
Along the way, the tone shifted. It seemed like he might be having a stroke, but scans were inconclusive.
Jared had no sensation in his right shoulder and arm. The feeling of nothingness spread into his neck and head. He was taken to the neurological intensive care unit.
Around midnight, he began twitching. His right arm was bending at the elbow and banging against his side. He pressed the call button for help then passed out. Jared was having a seizure.
As Jared was being prepped for surgery, doctors determined he had a stroke caused by a brain bleed. Doctors opted to use medicine to keep his seizures at bay. He eventually was moved to a regular room in the hospital.
Initially, Jared could barely lift his right arm off the bed. He was told that his progress would plateau after 18 months, and he’d eventually get used to his new normal.
That was actually the optimistic viewpoint. What they didn’t tell him was that they feared he might never again use his right arm.
Jared is right-handed. As an artist, his livelihood depends on that arm. So he poured himself into recovery.
Told to do an exercise twice a day, he’d do it a dozen times. Unable or allowed to drive, he relied on Alison to take him to appointments with a neurologist, a hematologist, and physical and occupational therapists.
“Healing was a total life project,” said Eden Hankins, Jared’s sister. “He sought a lot of his own physical, emotional and spiritual work around the recovery process. He’s a Taurus and he’s a bull, a quiet one, but if something is on his mind, he won’t stop until it’s done.”
Jared acknowledges that the mental side of healing was much harder than the physical. For five years, he’d wake up wondering, “Am I going to die today?” If he felt a twitch in his arm, he wondered if it was a sign of another stroke. A pulmonary embolism eight years after the stroke set him back briefly, but he kept moving forward.
“You’re physically and mentally altered for life,” he said. “At some point you just realize, ‘I’m going to put the best version of myself together today and live to fight another day.’”
Which he continues to do. He cherishes his life with Alison and their four teenaged children: Ivy, Cora and twins Beckett and Blake. He’s thankful he can paint again.
He is, Eden said, “incredibly present and grateful to be in the moment. He needed to learn to be patient and graceful with himself. He didn’t know how much he’d be able to recover, to paint or to draw.”
Watching the process was “phenomenal,” she said. “His art changed between pre-stroke and post-stroke. It became deeper, more detailed; there was more depth in its composition.
“The stroke made him a better artist.”
Written by Leslie Barker, American Heart Association.
