GREENFIELD — There are two things City Councilor Penny Ricketts wants her constituents to know: she’s alive and she’s coming back.
Ricketts suffered a stroke June 17, causing her to be hospitalized for several days. Despite the medical setback, Ricketts said she is determined to return to City Council and be a voice for her constituents.
“I want to get back,” she said. “The hardest part for me is that I don’t feel sick.”
Ricketts said the incident began Sunday, when she felt she had “such a bad toothache,” but “didn’t think anything was wrong” beyond that, and went to take some ibuprofen.
When her daughter Vanessa Ricketts came to visit the next morning around 6:15 a.m., though, she said she found the ibuprofen pills scattered throughout the home. Her daughter said she asked her mother why the pills were on the ground and from the other room “she had kind of just muttered something like she can’t pick them up and she sounded kind of strange.”
Vanessa Ricketts said shortly after she found her mother sitting on the bedroom floor unable to get up.
Vanessa helped her onto her bed and said that is when she noticed her mother’s slurred speech and difficulty staying upright on the bed. According to Vanessa, the slurred speech had started even earlier, however, with her brother Corey remarking that their mother had it when he talked to her on the phone Sunday night.
Vanessa Ricketts, who trained as an emergency medical technician, believed her mother was suffering from a stroke. She rushed her to Baystate Franklin Medical Center that morning.
The doctors huddled around her in the hospital, including a neurologist who was examining Ricketts remotely with a camera and communicating over a television screen, and confirmed that she had had a stroke, the city councilor said.
Penny Ricketts spent three days at Baystate Franklin before she said she was transferred to Baystate Medical Center on June 20 for further evaluation.
Penny Ricketts said the more rehabilitation she does, the quicker she would be back. She has already started making progress, as she is going for walks, carrying on conversations and laughing in spite of the stroke. She said she even made it to the Franklin County Pride Parade last Saturday, watching the march from inside Taylor’s Restaurant.
“I made sure to get back in time for the parade,” Ricketts said.
This week, her mother’s rehabilitation is taking place at Charlene Manor, a nursing home in Greenfield, Vanessa Ricketts said. While there, Penny Ricketts said, longer and more frequent rehabilitation efforts can happen, which could help expedite her recovery.
While she heals, Ricketts said she wants to be able to participate in a few city council meetings. She said she would like to be there in person, but in place of that she feels she should be able to call into meetings — a thought that was inspired by the neurologist interacting with her remotely at the hospital.
Earlier this week, City Council President Karen “Rudy” Renaud suggested that the council could bring back remote participation to help Ricketts take part in meetings, an idea the councilor was pleased to hear.
Remote participation is allowed in certain circumstances under Massachusetts Public Meeting Law and regulations from the state Attorney General.
In August 2015, Mayor William Martin signed an executive order allowing members from boards and commissions to use remote participation or opt out of the practice.
The council attempted remote participation once, Renaud said, though it was largely unsuccessful. The council opted out of the practice after that.
Two funds have been established to help Ricketts offset the costs accrued from her stroke and hospitalization.
The “Penny Fund” has been set up at Franklin First Credit Union, which people can donate directly to, or they can go online to a GoFundMe for Ricketts at https://gofundme.com/ys5uda-the-penny-fund.
You can reach Dan Desrochers at:
ddesrochers@recorder.com
413-772-0261, ext. 257