Back on track: Stroke survivor finishes 5k

Avid runner Moira Flanagan Brott lost her balance while jogging and assumed she had tripped on her shoelaces—until she learned it was far more serious. At age 45, Moira had suffered a carotid artery dissection—a tear in a major blood vessel that supplies blood to the brain, and a leading cause of stroke in people under 50. Carotid artery dissection occurs when layers of the artery suddenly separate, interrupting blood flow to the brain.

She was rushed to a local hospital and then transferred to West Jefferson Medical Center where surgeons repaired her carotid artery. Neurologist K. David Khoobehi treated Moira in the emergency room and she has been a patient of Dr. Khoobehi’s ever since.

The stroke left Moira weakened with a limp in her left leg, drop foot, and paralysis in her left hand. As a civil servant with the U.S. Marines, Moira leaned on her colleagues for inspiration. The servicemen and women were there for her.

“At first, I was in a wheelchair and the Marines would push me into work every day,” she recalls. “I’ve always been a driven person. I keep going. You can’t keep me down. But they helped me get back up on my feet and within a couple of months I was using a quad cane and then a single-point cane.”

She progressed in physical therapy to the point where she could start jogging again. One block at a time. One light post to the next light post starting in September 2018. She kept pushing herself. Amazingly, Moira was running a mile on the levee in uptown New Orleans by January 2019.

“My toes started bothering me while I was running,” Moira explained. “They would clench up.”

She saw Dr. Andrea Toomer, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist. Stroke can cause weakness on one side of the body but can also cause muscle tightness known as “spasticity,” according to Dr. Toomer.

“Spasticity causes an imbalance in the muscle action in the side of the body affected by the stroke. In Moira’s case, this was causing her toes and ankle to flex downward and for her knee to bend. We injected botulinum toxin directly into those muscles to relax them and give her leg more symmetry, allowing her to have freedom of movement and improved muscle control.”

Botulinum toxin is most commonly known for its cosmetic purposes, but these medications actually serve a strong purpose in treating muscle tightness after stroke or other neurological disorder and in Moira's case, it worked.

“The botulinum toxin shot helped settle down my toes so I can do what I want them to do,” Moira said.

On October 6, 2024, eight years after a life-threatening stroke, Moira ran in the Kelsey Bradley Favrot Memorial 5K to benefit brain cancer care at LSU Neurosurgery New Orleans. She was accompanied by 15 Marines, who were running beside her in Audubon Park. “It was fabulous. It was wonderful. I finished it and I’m really proud of having finished and I am so glad all the Marines were there with me. I’m getting back to doing the things that I love to do,” Moira said.