Daily Dose of Us

Brain surgery…..what 11 year old kid has to have brain surgery? How weird, what, when, how??? We still have no answers. He ended up with a large clot on the brain. The big answer we have is that he suffered a major STROKE. That’s the easiest way to put it. Those first few weeks in the PICU were horrible. He slept a lot, I prayed even more. We were told what parts of the brain were affected. What a blow!!! Will he walk? Will he talk? Will he have memories? Will he be able to function as a being? All I could do was pray…..how does one know when the doctors don’t even know. There were so many tears and fear for the unknown. I’m not even sure what could be more horrible. To add to everything, life continues to move forward, right?? It sure does. We also own our own restaurant/bar business that had to keep going. We made the decision that I would stay with T and hubby would work the restaurant and as time allowed, D would also help when he could.

FAMILY……that became an even stronger word that stroke. We all needed to work together and boy, did we have so many friends who are family that stepped up as well. It has been an amazing the love and support from so many that we don’t even know!!! We are truly blessed beyond measure and beyond words.

Back to T……that time in the PICU was good, bad and all the things. Just so many emotions. Seeing him at the beginning with so many different tubes and wires coming out of him. It was heartbreaking. No one should have to see their baby like that. Then a few days after surgery, while having an EEG system on his head, we experienced some seizures. There were no physical signs of them but that added more complications to his story.

Some healing of course was happening and then we slowly started rehab as well. I couldn’t believe it. Things were happening. He was awake! He was writing to communicate. We also were learning sign language and making up our own sign language. He was getting fed thru an NG tube which was getting pulled out on average one time per day. We were getting transferred to a floor room (not in the PICU) when the neurosurgury man came to check his head and found it oozing with a fever…..so that put us back in the PICU.