Rhode Island State Rep. Jeremiah “Jay” O’Grady was stretching after a workout at MacColl YMCA in Lincoln last August and he was looking forward to seeing a concert with his wife when his life was suddenly turned upside down.
“When I stood up, I noticed that I had a loss of peripheral vision in my left eye,” O’Grady said. “What was left of my vision was pretty distorted — similar to if you ever do something that involves seeing stars. It would be that sensation times like 100. I waited for it to go away and kept blinking, and it never did go away.”
The four-term Lincoln Democrat, a self-described gym rat, was suffering a stroke. O’Grady, 47, wound up being hospitalized in a neurological intensive care unit for seven days.
“At first, I was in total disbelief,” O’Grady told RIPR, in his first public comment on his health emergency. He said he was familiar with the symptoms of a stroke since a grandparent suffered one two years earlier.
But it wasn’t until he went home last August 4 and started losing control of his right leg “that I kind of put two and two together.” After a quick discussion with his wife, O’Grady was taken to the ER at Miriam Hospital.
“Going into that day I would have said I was in the best shape I had been in in quite a while,” said O’Grady, who ran cross country in high school and college, ran competitively into his 30s, and remained active at the gym.
But the lawmaker, a program officer at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, learned he had experienced a blockage of his left carotid artery. O’Grady said he found out he has an underlying vascular condition that predisposes him to this kind of blockage.
More than eight months later, O’Grady said he is not experiencing lasting effects from the stroke. But he calls the unexpected health emergency a major factor in his decision — announced last week — to not seek re-election.
“I’m not sure if it’s the main reason or not, but certainly it provided me an opportunity to reflect and assess how I was spending what spare time” exists outside of work, he said. “There was a stretch there where I returned from the hospital where I was pretty debilitated from a physical standpoint, and I sort of said, ‘gee, it would be good to make sure I was spending as much active time with my kids as possible.’ “
O’Grady and his wife Elizabeth have two children, Anna and Declan.
The Lincoln Democrat said he will need to take medication for the rest of his life to manage the issue that caused his stroke, and he’s supposed to avoid looking skyward. “I’m supposed to not look up. Painting ceilings would be a bad career to have,” O’Grady quipped.
The lawmaker said he’s grateful he got medical attention when he did, and he urges people who experience possible stroke symptoms to react quickly.
O’Grady won election to the RI House of Representatives in 2010 after defeating Rep. Mary Ann Shallcross Smith in a primary by 90 votes. He served on the Lincoln Town Council from 2005 to 2009. O’Grady is known as a policy guy who is well-liked by his colleagues.
“Jay is a gentleman and a friend though we often disagreed on issues,” Rep. Brian Newberry (R-North Smithfield) tweeted last week, after O’Grady announced his decision not to seek re-election. “He was a credit to the House. I am sorry to see him leave.”
With his time in the House winding down, O’Grady said he takes satisfaction in advocating for changes adopted in the 2016 budget meant to reduce funding disparities between charter schools and traditional public schools, and for pushing for a partial restoration of the historic tax credit in 2013.
Now, O’Grady said he wants to scale back his public profile, although he said he plans to remain civicly engaged.
“I will find some way to contribute,” he said. “It could be as simple as coaching Little League, which I have a great deal of interest in. It could be serving on a voluntary basis on some board or or commission or something like that. All that remains to be seen.”
