December | 2013 | Keep Calm Kitty

2013. A crazy, terrifying, and wonderful year. As this year comes to an end, I wanted to write about one of the hardest things I’ve ever experienced. Something that still gives me nightmares. I almost lost my mom. Here is my story. I couldn’t include everything. I’m sure I left a lot out, but it’s hard to keep everything that happened straight. SO much happened.

In March my mom started feeling really sick. She was in and out of doctor’s offices and they couldn’t find out what was wrong with her. The doctors finally diagnosed her with fibromyalgia. (This was wrong).

My parents and my brother were supposed to leave for my brother’s spring break vacation on Easter weekend, but my mom was feeling worse and worse. Her hemoglobin was dropping, she had a fever, and we didn’t think it would be good for her to travel. (Neither did any of the doctors we know). They decided to stay home. She went to the ER to get blood draws and cultures. She was sent home. On Easter, we got a phone call that she needed to go back to the hospital immediately because her cultures showed that she was septic. When you are septic it means that you have an infection in your blood. This alone is life threatening.

She was admitted into the hospital and they tried several different antibiotics before finding the strongest one. With her high fevers her heart was working really hard and she started having heart flutters. It is terrifying sitting there watching your mom resting and her heart is beating around 130bpm. She spent about 10 nights in the hospital and then was sent home with a picc line and visiting nurses. She was home for a few more days and the fevers got worse so we took her back. They decided that her picc line was possibly infected so they pulled it. She was admitted again and started talking funny that next day. She wasn’t able to finish sentences and was forgetting words. We told the nurses, but they said that she was probably a little loopy from some anxiety/sleeping medicine they gave her the night before. That night, after my dad left the hospital, my mom and I were watching a movie and talking about my wedding. I was asking her some questions yes or no questions that would be easy for her to answer, when she suddenly wasn’t able to get the words “yes” or “no” out. A nurse happened to walk in right when this happened and I told her my mom couldn’t speak. She questioned my mom, but no words came out. She looked so scared because she couldn’t find her words. About three seconds after this she had her first seizure.

I can honestly say that I have never, in my whole life, experienced anything so scary. They called a rapid response team into the room and I was left in the hallway watching everything. I called my dad panicked and crying. He was on his way back. She came out of the seizure and couldn’t talk. She didn’t know her name. She didn’t know where she was, or what had happened. She was confused. She glanced out to the hallway and saw me. She reached for me and started crying. I went and sat right at her side. She was crying so hard, and I could see in her eyes that she was worried about me. She was the one who just had a seizure and she was feeling terrible that I had to see it. I wiped away my tears and told her it was okay. I pulled myself together and told her she was going to be okay. We had the most awesome guy on the rapid response team. He held her hand and told her that he would stay with her and take her down to her MRI. When they were about to roll her away she was able to slur out the words “I love you”. While he was with her she had another seizure and then he was able to give her some anxiety medicine to calm her down. He took care of her and was so kind to all of us. He kept checking in with us, even when we got moved to other floors and even when she was finally sent home. We were blessed to have him.

Her MRI showed that she had a stroke. Apparently a clot had formed in her heart when she was experiencing the flutter. The clot shot off and hit her brain causing a bleed (stroke). We also found out that she had a clot in her arm from her picc line. They started her on blood thinners. And not just pills, she had to get shots in the tummy. She also was given anti-seizure medication. And she kept having seizures until they got the dosage correct. Her headaches were so bad that it was hard for her to sit up and open her eyes. Every time she had a seizure it would mess up her speech a little bit more. After about a week we were sent home again with huge antibiotic pills, anti-seizure meds, and lovenox injections. After a few days at home she seemed a little better. We thought things were looking up. She had a nurse come to visit and when we all sat around her I noticed that the right side of her face was a little droopy. I could immediately tell something wasn’t right and I told my dad. He asked the nurse and it seemed like my mom was having another stroke. Shortly after the ambulance was at the house and taking her to the hospital again.

We still don’t really know if what happened was another stroke or just another seizure, but after that her speech was awful. She lost most of her words and couldn’t read or explain pictures to the nurse. She couldn’t tell them her name or her birthday. The neurologist got more involved this time around. Apparently the bleed in her brain had caused an infected abscess. They did more scans and more MRIs, and then got a neurosurgeon involved. By this time, she had been admitted to the neurological wing of the hospital. They couldn’t figure out what was in the abscess from the scans so the surgeon wanted to operate. We talked it over. And over again. We decided to do the surgery. I don’t even think that the surgeon wanted to do the surgery because the abscess was right in the speech center of her brain.

I had stayed pretty strong throughout this whole process. I had been keeping the faith, but the night before her surgery I lost it. She pulled me close and tried to tell me what sounded like goodbyes. I couldn’t handle it. I went out into the hallway and sat on a bench and just started bawling. I was really losing the faith. I was really struggling. This is when a complete stranger came up to me and told me to pray because it works. I still think that this man was an angel.

The morning of the surgery we went to meet her in the pre-op room to wish her luck. We were sent out and left to wait. When the surgery was over my dad and I were called into a conference room where we waited for her surgeon. He finally came in and said that things went as well as expected. They drained what they could from the abscess, and took a sample of a fibroid that had grown next to it. He then told us “now we just need to see IF she wakes up and IF she can speak.” When the doctor left the room there were many tears shed. And she did wake up. And she did speak. They might have been slurred words, but she could speak. After her surgery she spent a couple of nights in neuro ICU, and then was sent back to the normal neuro floor.

I think this time around we spent about a week in the hospital. She had neuro checks and speech therapy very frequently. I even started giving her neuro checks. She continued having trouble with her speech and finding words, but we helped her. Between my dad and I we were pretty much able to know what she was trying to say. We didn’t know if her speech would come back. We didn’t know if she would be able to find words again, but that was okay because we had her. We were sent home with visiting nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists. She started walking again with a cane on one side and with one of us on the other side. She was watched at all times. I gave her frequent neuro checks like I had watched the doctors do several times.

With her visits put together she spent about a month in the hospital. At the beginning of this month I had a wedding planned for June 22nd and by the end of the month my wedding was rescheduled for August 22nd. My mom had been my #1 wedding planning buddy throughout my whole engagement, and I wanted to finish those last couple of months before the wedding with her by my side. I wanted to wait until she was healthy enough to finish the planning that we started together. I wanted her to feel better. I wanted her to be able to have fun, and dance.

She made so much progress. She graduated from speech therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy before the wedding. And on the day of the wedding she was amazing. As Macklemore might say “we danced, we cried, we laughed, and had a really really really good time”.

I was blessed to have my mom there on my wedding day. It was pouring rain, but she was our sunshine. I am so blessed to have a dad that loves my mom like crazy. A dad that was with her every single day in the hospital. A dad that held us all together and kept us strong when things were really tough. I am blessed to have a husband (fiance at the time) that drove back and forth from Lansing to be with me on the nights I couldn’t sleep, which was most nights. I am blessed to have two brothers who bring so much love and positive energy everywhere they go. I am blessed to have a friend that would drop anything to be with me during this time. I am blessed for the wonderful doctors, nurses, and patient care assistants that helped my mom.

Sepsis, AFib, Endocarditis, Pulmonary Embolisms, Clots, Stroke, Seizures, Brain Swelling, Infected Brain, Brain Surgery. And her heart valve made it through. And she made it through. And she can talk. Amazing.