2 years ago

Almost 2 years ago to the day (Oct 25th and 26th), our little family was experiencing a crisis like no other. Gary had a stroke. It's still so amazingly miraculous to think about how he couldn't walk, slurred when he talked, was going to have to wear an eye patch for double vision, and couldn't use his right arm......to being probably 90% completely recovered. The fact that he's still HERE is the most amazing part. Needless to say THANKFUL and GRATEFUL come to mind a ton.

Look at what he was doing this year, compared to 2 years ago:

Grateful-thankful-grateful-thankful-grateful-thankful...and repeat.

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2007 email to family and friends about G's status while he was starting his 2nd week of a 3 week hospital stay (warning: kind of graphic medical crap described):



Hey there! Gary's dad brought us his laptop to use while we are at the hospital, so I can fill you in a bit.

Last Thursday, Gary woke up to get ready for work and he asked me to look at his eyes because they felt like they were moving in circles. They were moving back and forth and twitchy-like. I took him to the ER and they did a CT scan which came back clean and because he had a
headache/neck ache while in Florida and M. Beach, they thought that he might have some fluid somewhere causing vertigo. The ER gave him meds and then sent us home.

All that Thursday, his head and neck REALLY REALLY still hurt, but we thought that w/the meds it would hopefully go away.

Friday morning he felt okay enough to take a shower, but during the shower his right arm and leg became uncontrollable...and then he was feeling very sick and started dry heaving. Any kind of movement made him hurl. I told him I was going to take him back to the ER but he
couldn't move, so I called 911.

Because of our previous day's events and a clean CT scan, the medics thought that maybe he was having a bad reaction to the meds.

The ER seemed to be of the same thought, but they wanted to do an MRI to be sure. The radiologist said there was a tiny "spot" on the MRI in his cerebellum indicating a possible stroke...so tiny the doctor said she couldn't see it. A stroke in the cerebellum causes involuntary
reflexes, imbalance, dizziness and nauseous ness, which is why they thought it could be vertigo. Marysville doesn't have a neurologist, so they transported him to Riverside (OSU was full).

Once at Riverside, they wanted to do their own MRI/MRA so that they could see more of the neck area to confirm the neurologist's suspicions that he had a tear in his artery (which he has seen happen in younger stroke patients). During this time, they started him on blood thinners to prevent another stroke from happening. Well, that MRI/MRA came back inconclusive...the radiologist couldn't say yes or no about a tear. Soooo, they had him do a cerebral angiogram where they go through the groin artery up to his neck and brain. They were able to tell definitively that he did have a tear (called a dissection) in the artery on the left side of
his neck/bottom of his head area. This tear was causing blood to pool up and then a section of this pooling broke off and caused the stroke. So treatment is blood thinners (heparin by IV and coumadine by mouth). The blood will thin thereby removing/preventing any clots and the platelets in the blood will repair the tear. No surgery will be needed (YEA!!!).

Well, Tuesday night his groin area started to bleed profusely...it took 3 hours to get it to stop. Lots of pressure, lots of gauze, and he had to "sleep" flat on his back and to not move his right leg with a 5 pound bag of sand on his groin for added pressure...while they checked his vitals and the groin area every half hour, then every hour throughout the night. ugh!

A vascular surgeon was called in to look at it on Wednesday a.m. and he ordered an ultrasound to make sure the artery was sealed (which came back as "mostly sealed"), but he cleared Gary to do some physical therapy (he was able to walk out the room and down about 5-6 rooms and
turn around, with the help of 2 therapists and a rope around his waist for support).

But later Wed night he started to bleed again and it took 2 hours to stop, but then followed the same procedure as the night before.

Thursday a.m. the vascular surgeon came in, decided it was just bleeding topically and put in a couple of stitches with NO numbing medicine. He told Gary that the needle to numb him is bigger than what he was going to stitch him with and that the lidocaine would burn until it was numbed up...so NO numbing (OMG, OMG!!!). Again, he was cleared for therapy, which he did some more walking with the therapists and even tried a couple of stairs with them.

Then, you guessed it: Thursday night he started bleeding again. But because the skin/hole was stitched shut, it bled internally and swelled. The size of the swelling/pool of blood was a little smaller than half a basketball. And then they had to put pressure on that to get it to stop
bleeding internally!!! OMG-yikes!!!

Friday morning the vascular surgeon was back in and scheduled Gary for surgery to stitch shut the artery, suction out as much blood as he could and then stitch the skin closed.

Friday and Friday night was very painful and the drugs they gave him helped bring the pain down, but was always still there.

Saturday (yesterday) was still painful, but dealing with it...until Saturday night when the nurses said that it looked like it was swelling some more and oozing more than they thought it should. So they put 50 pounds of pressure directly on the swollen surgical area for 40 minutes. They also had an ultrasound done (in his room) to determine if the swelling was blood that might be causing an aneurysm (it came back as tissue swelling only--no aneurysm!!). During this time, they changed his pain medicine to something stronger, which helped (happy sleepy
drugs).

They checked on him every hour during the night, so even with the drugs, they were still waking him up...but they said it looks better. We're waiting on the attending physician and the vascular surgeon to assess him today for another update. Although, as I was typing this the swelling was increasing again. :(

Once we get this groin thing under control (which also ended up giving him a staph infection from the "star" closure from the initial angiogram procedure), we can hopefully move to the therapy portion of his recovery. The therapists said that once he can leave this room, he will go to their rehab center for 7-10 days. They'll do 3 hours of intense therapy everyday there (concentrating on his balance, walking and using his right arm). Luckily, the slurring in his speech has been going away and the speech therapist said that the slurring will probably only be noticeable when he's tired. Then from there, they think he'll be able to come home, but he'll still be required to do either outpatient therapy or in-home therapy. We have a 4-level split home, so we're going to have some issues with all the freakin' stairs in our house, but we'll worry about that later.

So that (in a VERY big nutshell) is what's going on.

Thanks very much for all the thoughts and prayers--they mean a lot!
-val


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Now fast-forward 2 years to this:

Grateful-thankful-grateful-thankful-grateful-thankful...and repeat.