Beauty influencer Jackie Miller James is getting candid about her road to recovery nearly two years after suffering a stroke while pregnant.
When asked whether there are times that are “hard,” Jackie, 36, said during a Wednesday, May 7, segment on the Today show, “Yes, Oh my God. Absolutely.”
“It sucks. It sucks. It sucks, man. It’s hard. But, what can you do?” Jackie noted.
In 2023, Jackie — who was then pregnant with her and husband Austin’s first baby — suffered a stroke caused by a ruptured aneurysm days before her due date.
“I come out, and she has collapsed against the wall,” Austin recalled on Today.
Jackie was rushed to a nearby hospital, where a neurosurgeon was on call.
“We saw a very large blood clot in the left part of the brain. It was about three and a half inches long. We decided that the baby needed to come out right then and there at the same time that we needed to deal with a removal of clot from the brain,” the doctor recalled.
The doctor, and a team of more than 30 others, went into the operating room to save Jackie.
“That was probably the fullest O.R. that I’ve ever been in [in] my entire life,” the doctor said.
Austin, for his part, recalled a conversation with a doctor about the severity of his wife’s health battle.
“One of the doctors comes out and he says, ‘Your daughter is going to die if we don’t deliver,’” Austin said. “He comes back later and says, ‘Your wife has a fist full of blood pushing into her brain.’”
Austin said Jackie had a simultaneous craniectomy and C-section. He also admitted he struggled to hold and care for their daughter amid Jackie’s health struggle. “I couldn’t hold her for days,” Austin said, while getting visibly emotional. “To be there, holding our child without her, felt really wrong.”
Jackie was put into a medically induced coma for nearly three weeks, eventually waking up with weakness in her right arm and leg and trouble speaking. Austin noted that the “expectation” was that Jackie was “not going to walk, she’s probably not going to have full use of both limbs.” He also added that there were “question marks” about “how much” she would be able to communicate verbally.
Now, Jackie is pursuing various therapies and learning how to navigate with her left hand. “My speech, my leg and my arm, it’s just like, it’s a little bit stronger, but more, though. More, more, more,” Jackie said.
She’s also documented her rehabilitation on social media — and finds hope in their “baby,” daughter Knoxly Rose.
“She’s the glue that keeps us together. She’s never asked, ‘Why me?’ She’s always focused on the positive moments,” Austin gushed of his wife. “A testament to why we keep fighting, too.”
NBC’s Kate Snow noted at the end of the segment that the couple are hoping to expand their family.
