Staci Kelehan of Le Bella Vita Furniture in her wood shop. Lee Ball Photography

According to The Brain Aneurysm Foundation, about 30,000 people in the United States suffer a ruptured brain aneurysm, a weakened area in the wall of an artery, each year.

Staci Kelehan became a statistic at barely 40 years old when she experienced not one, but two brain aneurysms at the same time. The details of the day that changed her life are pieced together from what little she remembers and what was told to her.

In 2013, she was home alone at work refurbishing some furniture in her workroom and the next thing she recalls is waking up in the bathtub laying down and trying with all her might to pick up her head. “It felt like someone had cut the back of my neck with a chainsaw,” she grits. “I made it into the bed and called my mom and told her something was wrong. We thought it was a migraine. That’s the last thing I remember.” Staci’s mother took care of her for three days and when the vomiting and pain continued, she brought her daughter to the ER.

A scan confirmed that one aneurysm had ruptured and another was on the verge. If an aneurysm ruptures, or breaks, it can cause life-threatening bleeding and brain damage. To block blood flow into the ruptured aneurysm, and eliminate the risk of further breach, a procedure known as endovascular coiling was performed. A Lafayette neurologist inserted a catheter with a soft metal, spring-shaped coil – as thin as human hair – into an artery in the groin and guided it into the affected brain artery.

After the procedure, Staci was in a coma for almost a month. She remembers a strange dream: “I was dreaming that my friends and I took flowers from a graveyard.” Perhaps it was foretelling of robbing death.

The American Stroke Association statistics show that once an aneurysm bleeds, the chance of death is 30 to 40 percent, and the chance of significant brain damage is 20 to 35 percent—even with treatment. In Staci’s case, doctors gave her a 3 percent chance of survival. Her family has been forewarned that if she were to live, she’d have a disability to the possible extent of being unable to walk, talk, or see.

Then one day, to everyone’s surprise, Staci woke to the sound of her mother asking if she wanted to see her dog Mollie. For the next few days, she could only manage to mumble, but her physical and special therapy progressed amazingly quickly. “It took only a couple weeks for me to regain my motor skills,” Staci remembers.

Months later, she began experiencing severe headaches from swelling due to the coils. Staci was taken to Shreveport where a shunt was put in to drain fluid from her brain to her stomach.

Once she was able, she went back to doing the one thing that still came very natural to her: refurbishing and making furniture. “As a very young child, I used to watch my dad build doll furniture and I’d help him. I can’t remember a time that I wasn’t building something,” she says. Maybe it was a newfound appreciation for the unpredictability of life that made her more determined to pursue a career in furniture.

But there was another setback, in 2015, when a different but equally severe pain sent Staci back to the ER. In a totally unrelated case, an 11-pound mass was discovered on her ovary, filling it with blood. She was sent to Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans where the benign mass was removed, and she recovered from that as well.

Amazingly, there would be a couple other medical hurdles that she would conquer.

Until finally in July 2018, she built her first farmhouse table, posted it online and “it took off.” That was the launch of her business with partner (and fiancé) Kim LeBlanc. The company name La Bella Vita Furniture by Staci (meaning the good life) is a nod to her grateful outlook on life since her near-death experience.

From Staci’s designs, the couple makes farmhouse dining tables, benches, children’s furniture, coffee caddies, TV consoles, headboards and outdoor furniture. Made of yellow pine and painted by Staci, the pieces resemble items found in Birch Lane or Joss & Main catalogs. Each knob, pull and architectural detail is thoughtfully chosen. For commissioned pieces, there are several stain colors to choose from. Kim credits Staci as the mastermind behind the furniture. “I just help her,” he says modestly.

Her work is sold on Facebook at La Bella Vita Furniture by Staci, but custom pieces can be commissioned. Prices are less than furniture stores and there are really good sales a few times a year.

Staci describes the style of her furniture as farmhouse, but it has a Southeast Hampton look to it as well. And, she says her designs are influenced by customers’ needs and requests, which prompt her to make each piece a little different from the other.

She says anytime she can take a customized piece to another level it makes it that much more special. She was touched when a woman asked her to make a pub table as a gift for a young man whom she’d raised, and was given a message to write under the table for him.

When Staci and Kim outgrew the first 200-square-foot workshop they’d built, they added another slightly larger, next to their home on the outskirts of New Iberia – on the same property where Kim was raised.

The larger shop, where most of the work is done, is organized and amazingly clear of saw dust when not in use. There are many tools, from modern ones to older hand planes. As to which she covets the most? “I couldn’t make anything without my drills,” Staci says. She hopes to, one day, add a “good-quality wood lathe” to her collection.

Most mornings, work starts around 9 a.m. If she’s really excited about a project she’s working on, Staci will push through well into the evening, with a break for lunch. Her Christian music is always on.

“l’ll go through phases where I’ll get bored and then I’ll start up again,” Staci explains. “Sometimes I’ll get inspired by something as simple as a light fixture. (She points to a unique overhead light in one of her popular coffee stations.) Lately she’s been working on a Mexican tile design on the inside of them.

For Staci, her furniture is a personal source of pride because it’s intended to last for generations and hopefully be passed down from one family member to the next. Not surprising then that the tables are cataloged by the names of her children and grandchildren: The Morgan Baylee, the Zoie, the Drake, Kenzie Alexis, Vivian Leigh, The Carter – and Kourtlyn, named after Kim’s daughter.

Time spent with her family has taken on an even deeper meaning for Staci. She admits that her faith is much stronger now than before her aneurysms. That is certainly reflected in another creative outlet: a series of religious-themed paintings, titled “Jesus Watching Windows” that include gold-gilded crosses, large angel wings, angels in flight or congregated in white gowns.

Today, the only visible result of her aneurysms is a very slight droop of her left eye. Those who know her, know she gave up smoking after she woke from her coma; her doctor told her that her history of smoking was a risk factor for the aneurysms.

Among the other hard-learned lessons, she shares, “I appreciate life more; I used to worry about things…about work… and making the next dollar. Not anymore.”

And in hindsight, Staci says she should have gone to the hospital sooner. But that is evidently a common mistake made, as the Brain Aneurysm Foundation reports delays in diagnosis occur in up to one fourth of patients. What’s scarier is they say an estimated 6.5 million people in the United States, 1 in 50 people, have an unruptured brain aneurysm, and don’t know it.