So I woke up on April 14, 2018, and was so excited that I didn’t have a headache. I couldn’t get over how bad that migraine cycle had been. It was absolutely brutal, but it was over! Now I could focus on my niece’s bridal shower. I was going to emcee the games for the event and was excited to be a part of it. I had been really nervous with how bad I had been feeling. As I was getting ready that morning, my husband and I were talking about the headache and that we were both glad that it finally broke because I had to drive 3 hours to get to the shower. I focused on getting myself ready and was so happy. After I was done, I was goofing around with SnapChat filters and just being my weird self. It was a fabulous day!
I hopped in the car and set off on my journey. As I headed toward Youngstown, I was singing along to the radio and sipping on my drink. I enjoyed road trips so I was in my element. My husband called a few times just to make sure my headache was still under control. I had told him that I could still feel it, but it was nothing like what it had been. As long as I could tolerate it, I was fine.
I finally arrived at the community center where the shower was and my sister and family were in the process of decorating. I asked what I could help with and there wasn’t much for me to do so I sat down and wrote the card out for my niece. As my sister broke away to go get ready, I told her I’d come with her and talk to her. We went into the bathroom where she set out to do her hair and makeup and I was leaning against the wall telling her a story that I thought was hilarious. Barely a few sentences into the story, my headache came back with a vengeance.
I remember looking at myself in the mirror, as I lifted my hands to my head, and I let out a piercing scream of “my head!” It felt like a hot knife pushing through the top of my skull. I was dying and I knew it. It felt like I was falling through a dark hole…collapsing into an abyss. Thirty seconds, 20 minutes, or 2 hours later, I don’t know, but I woke up on the floor of the bathroom. My sister’s face was above me as she stroked my forehead. I could see the concern on her face. I heard voices but couldn’t place them. Behind me I heard someone ask “is she still alive?” and my niece sharply respond “YES! Get out of here!” There was no mistaking the fear in her voice. I started vomiting uncontrollably, I couldn’t feel anything. I had no idea what was happening. I remember laying on the floor crying and all I could do was apologize to my niece for ruining her special day. I felt truly awful and just wanted to sink into the floor from embarrassment.
There are a lot of holes in my memory at this point. Things faded in and out, I have pieces of things but nothing truly substantial. I fell in and out of consciousness. The medics arrived and I was loaded onto the gurney and into the ambulance. I remember my 79-year old mother climbing into the ambulance with me and seeing the fear on her face. The fear of seeing her youngest child dangerously sick. I heard someone else ask if mom was coming with me and my mom firmly saying “she is not going alone!” I don’t remember the ambulance ride. I don’t know if I was conscious or not. I remember seeing ceiling lights flashing overhead through my closed eyes as I was wheeled into the ER. I opened my eyes and my dad was staring at me. I began to tear up and asked what he was doing there. I knew he didn’t drive much anymore, but there he was. Why was he there? I just had a headache! He just looked at me the way a dad looks at his baby and whispered “I would have driven as long as it took to get to you” and he squeezed my hand and wiped away the falling tears.
That is the last thing I remember.
I’ve been told that I was in and out of consciousness after that. I had conversations. I even stood up and walked to the bathroom on my own. None of that exists in my brain anymore. It is all gone. I’ve asked my doctors. I’ve asked my therapists. They’ve all told me not to search for those memories. The brain is like a computer hard drive. It is holding all of your knowledge, memories, skills. My hard drive has been damaged irreparably and those memories are permanently gone. So much of me wants the details, but I’ve been told the trauma would be unbearable, so I push aside the gnawing questions and curiosity in exchange for some level of sanity.
At some point, I was transferred to a different hospital that could handle my trauma. I began having seizures and stopped breathing. I was intubated and fell into a coma. I would later learn that my brain had been bleeding for 4.5 weeks. I had suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm, a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a subdural hematoma, and due to the amount of blood and swelling of my brain, my brain had a 7.5mm midline shift to the left. The prognosis was grim. My husband, who had driven the 3 hours to get to me, arrived at the hospital thinking that I was just dealing with a migraine. He had no idea that every peace we knew would soon be ripped away. The hospital staff and police confronted him. How had I sustained this damage to my brain? Had I fallen? Did he hit me? My family defended him. Everything had turned into chaos. My family was told there was only a 6% chance that I would live and if I managed to survive, there was little chance that I would be functional. My life was essentially over as we knew it.
Looking back, I cannot imagine what my family was going through. I was laying unresponsive in a hospital bed with tubes and wires coming out of my body at every angle. A machine was breathing for me. And no one had any clue if I would ever wake up. My husband was given a choice of which procedure he wanted the doctor to do. The statistics were slightly better for one over the other, but the procedures were totally different. I was taken into surgery to attempt to coil the ruptured aneurysm. The surgeon was hopeful to be able to do the coil procedure because it would be less invasive. They would go through an artery in my groin and snake their way up to my brain and implant platinum coils into the aneurysm to stop the bleeding and hopefully prevent it from growing and getting any blood flow in the future. If my arteries were too twisted to get through, they would need to crack open my skull and clip it in a procedure known as a craniotomy. Thankfully, the coil procedure was successful, but the waiting continued. I had made it through the surgery, but there was still no guarantees. There was no guarantee that I would wake up or what I would be like if I did.
Four days later, I finally woke up. It was at that point I found out the basic details of what had happened. I’m not sure how I reacted or what questions I had as I still have no memory of that. I do remember laying alone in my room in ICU that night and processing what I had learned that day. Earlier in the day, I had told my husband that the only thing that I had remembered was hearing the words “be still” while I was in a coma. I assume that I had some awareness while unconscious and a nurse was telling me to be still while they did their exams on me. So as I was laying there pondering my new reality in the quiet of the night, I heard, very clearly “be still and know that I am God” whispered right into my ear. I whipped around to see who was there. No one was in my room. My movement must have alerted a nurse because she came rushing in to check on me and ask if I was okay. I asked if anyone else was in the room and she told me it was just the two of us. I knew I had been awake. This wasn’t a dream. In that moment, there was an unbelievable calm that washed over me. I couldn’t explain it, I had just had brain surgery. I had nearly died. And yet, there I was…calm. The nurse was done with her checks and said goodnight as she lowered my bed and she left my room, leaving me alone again. I settled back into my pillow and just let the tears flow. I knew I’d be okay. No matter what battles I still needed to fight, I knew I’d be okay.
