It has not been an easy road for Stacy Sanchez-Ibarra, a Brownsville native and small business owner with a creative streak a mile wide.
She took over Artesana Embroidery & Screen Printing in Brownsville, formerly part of Comet Cleaners on East Price Road, in 2017 and wasted no time in building a robust, loyal clientele. But then Sanchez-Ibarra’s life spun out of control, her health deteriorated profoundly and she was forced to close the business — for good it seemed at the time.
But she’s managed to overcome all of it and fight her way back. Sanchez-Ibarra and Artesana Embroidery & Screen Printing are back in business.
She’s OK with telling her story, difficult as it was, since someone else might be able to relate to it and perhaps find some solace knowing that help is available, she said.
It all started in 2020, the year COVID-19 began sweeping the world. Sanchez-Ibarra brought groceries for her parents in Brownsville and spoke with them on the phone every day, but otherwise stayed away to avoid spreading the virus to them in those pre-vaccine days.
One day in May she received a panicked call from her mother. It was Sanchez-Ibarra’s father. She and her husband, Daniel, rushed to her parents’ house, not far from Artesana.
“I don’t know how I got there fast but I got there,” Sanchez-Ibarra said. “I think I knew that he was already gone at that moment.”
CPR had no effect. When the ambulance finally arrived, the EMTs were likewise unable to resuscitate her father, who Sanchez-Ibarra said suffered a massive heart attack that she believes was brought on in part by the stress of prolonged lockdown. Not being able to see his grandson, her son, was especially tough on her father, she said.
And though there’s nothing she could have possibly done, Sanchez-Ibarra was consumed with crushing guilt for not being able to save him, she said. She received therapy — over the phone because of COVID — to deal with the resulting post traumatic stress disorder, and today Sanchez-Ibarra can talk about it without falling apart, she said.
Things would get worse before they got better. In November 2020, Sanchez-Ibarra suddenly began feeling extreme anxiety for no reason that she could pinpoint, though she later realized it was likely related to the PTSD.
“I couldn’t sleep at night, and while I was laying there I felt like I needed to get up and run,” she said. “I didn’t know where I needed to go. It was like I couldn’t breathe and I had to get out of here.”
Sometimes the panic attacks would strike while she was working, again for no apparent reason.
Fast forward to Jan. 20, 2021. Sanchez-Ibarra was watching the presidential inauguration on TV when suddenly the screen began swimming. Her eyes felt unusually tired and she was dizzy.
She tried to shake it off and get back to work, but the pixels on her computer screen wouldn’t stay still. Something was wrong. She didn’t feel well.
“I’m the type of person, I’ll keep going even if I feel like crap,” Sanchez-Ibarra said.
Not this time. She drove home from the shop only with great difficulty, the dizziness and vertigo were so bad. Sitting down at home, it only got worse, she said.
“I was sitting there and then I would suddenly feel like I was falling,” Sanchez-Ibarra said.
She could barely walk and feared the worst — a stroke, or a tumor. At an urgent care clinic she tested positive for COVID, but that wasn’t what was causing the dizziness and vertigo, it turned out, and she had to quarantine for two weeks before she could see an ear, nose and throat specialist.
“By then I was already feeling super dizzy all the time and it just wouldn’t go away,” Sanchez-Ibarra said. “I couldn’t lie down all the way flat. I felt like I needed to sit up because it just felt like I was falling backwards. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t do anything.”
The ENT diagnosed benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, which can cause severe dizziness. By this time, however, the anxiety had taken over completely.
“I couldn’t do anything,” Sanchez-Ibarra said. “I couldn’t move from where I was sitting. I would just stare into space. I wasn’t talking. I was just so scared. I didn’t know what was wrong with me.”
The fact that her business was sitting idle and not making money just made its worse. TV sitcoms offered a few hours relief, allowing her to tune everything else out. They were safe, predictable and the camera angles were constant, and she dreaded the time of day when the TV stations switched to different programming for a few hours until evening.
Just looking into a mirror made her dizzy. She’d stopped bathing and changing clothes. Her family was intensely worried and mystified by her condition. Then Sanchez-Ibarra sank into a deep, unrelenting depression.
At one point she had undergone vestibular therapy to address the constant dizziness, though it didn’t seem to have an effect. She underwent three MRIs. Multiple sclerosis was floated as a possibility. Sanchez-Ibarra endured the worst of it for about five months, and at times mused about intentionally walking into traffic just to end the suffering.
Finally her psychiatrist, who she still sees, suggested medication, starting with the lowest possible dose and then increasing dosages as necessary. That was May 2021. Though she’s extremely nervous about taking new medication, it proved to be a lifeline, Sanchez-Ibarra said.
“All it did was make me sleepy, so I was, like, OK, I’ll go to sleep,” she said. “Man, those first few weeks on that medication, I was so sleepy.”
Still, it began to do the trick. One day while out walking Sanchez-Ibarra noticed she was humming and singing to herself, something that hadn’t happened in months, and realized she’d turned a corner.
Worried about restarting her business in case she should relapse, Sanchez-Ibarra overcame that fear, moved her equipment back in and officially reopened Artesana on Sept. 1.
In addition to custom screen printing and embroidery, she’s been sewing little stuffed animal dolls, bookmarks and other items as part of her Cositas Curiosas sideline to sell at markets around the Rio Grande Valley and, more recently, in Austin.
Sanchez-Ibarra’s designs run toward whimsical and adorable, sometimes with a side of punk, with close attention to workmanship and detail.
She still has bouts of dizziness, but it’s under control and she can work again. Even more important, Sanchez-Ibarra is again able to create, something she’s been hard-wired for since childhood.
“I just can’t not make something,” she said. “I have to make stuff. It makes me so happy.”
She’s also busy trying to rebuild Artesana’s clientele and get the word out that the embroidery and screen printing operation is back in full swing.
“I’m back,” Sanchez-Ibarra said. “My brain’s back. My business is back. Everything’s back.”
MORE INFORMATION:
>> Artesana Embroidery & Screen Printing
2120 E. Price Road
(956) 280-5986
>> Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988
988Lifeline.org
