At 60 years old, James Phillips keeps a schedule busier than most people half his age. But it took a lot of hard work to get his life to the place it is today.
James was traveling with family members to North Carolina nine years ago when he suffered his stroke, caused by high blood pressure. He had diabetes and didn’t know it. James doesn’t remember anything about the trip, just that he woke up in a hospital bed, unable to speak. “I didn’t understand what happened to me, but I was very upset that it did,” James says. “I thought my life was over.”
James did his rehabilitation at Magee Stroke Center at Jefferson Health in Pennsylvania. His inpatient stay lasted eight weeks, but James continued with occupational therapy for three years.
“Those first three or four years, I learned a lot about stroke and about myself,” James says.
“Your stroke or brain injury doubts you all the time, telling you, ‘You can’t do it,’” James says. “But someone who went through the same journey will tell you that you can do it.”
In the last year, James walked his daughter Ayanna down the aisle at her wedding and landed his first job since his stroke, through the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation in Pennsylvania. It took a while, about two years, to find a job he enjoyed that was relatively close to his home in Philadelphia’s Germantown section.
“That was definitely a test of all the patience that I learned at Magee,” James says of his job search. “You have to be patient to get the results that you want, in any area of your life.” He works three days a week at the Goodwill Donation Center on Lincoln Drive.
“The thing that I tell people all the time is, ‘Don’t wait for a miracle,’” James says. “The miracle is inside of you. Challenge yourself every day. Things happen when you do your best and make an effort.”
That’s such a great story