Thank you for allowing me to be part of this forum; I am so grateful for this resource. I remember searching and searching for some good news during my own experience and wanted to share a hopeful story here for those who want to read about a positive outcome.
In November 2013, after having moved 2,000 miles from California to Indiana and spending the very first night in our new home, my husband suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage as the result of a brain aneurysm. I’ll never forget that night in the ER when the doctor told us my husband would need brain surgery. Immediately. He underwent surgery the next day to clip it. I had a four-year-old son, and I knew exactly two people in the area, one of whom was our realtor.
The surgery was successful, but the recovery was more complicated. My husband was in a drug-induced coma for several weeks since he kept trying to remove his trach tube, and also kept trying to get out of bed. His head and face were swollen and black and blue and he looked so helpless and foreign, laying in that hospital bed. I despaired, wondering how anyone could recover from this. The doctors couldn’t give a prognosis on his cognitive recovery since we’d know only when he woke up and the swelling went down. They couldn’t even guarantee he’d survive, and if he did, the possiblity that my husband would never walk or control his bodily functions again was real. I considered getting a hospital bed and setting it up in our new dining room.
It was terrifying. I was so shocked that I went numb. I trudged through the days with a thousand-yard stare. Thank God for our friends and family who swooped in to help, flying and driving in to provide support. Even still, it was lonely. A dark, scary time.
When my husband came out of the coma, I like to say, he put on his crazy pants. The swelling in his brain caused him to be impulsive, unreasonable and quick to anger— he even called my father, an attorney, at one point to ask him for help divorcing me since I wouldn’t check him out of the hospital. It’s funny now, but it sure wasn’t at the time. We had to beg and plead with him to go to rehab (which he ultimately did).
But I’m here to tell you, I can hear my husband from his office upstairs, chatting with our 10-year-old son. Even today it’s music to my ears. Tom, my husband, has made a full recovery, and with the exception of an almost imperceptible scar on his temple, you’d never guess he’d been so close to death.
I am indescribably grateful for this outcome. I don’t mean to be cavalier or to minimize the seriousness of a brain aneurysm. I thank God every day for our outcome, and I know it is not a story everyone can tell. I certainly don’t suggest everyone will have the same journey, but there IS hope for a full recovery. It IS possible. My husband is living proof.
Yes I had after effects that I got over!!!