Survivor’s Wife, you rock! I feel pretty sure that your love for your husband is a big reason he continues to fight. Without our partners, our friends, recovery would be very hard indeed. For me, people like you, Eduardo and others are a Gift to us. You and the other caregivers fight this recovery battle with us. It is heartbreaking and rejoicing all at the same time. Remember to do somethings for yourself.
When I was in ICU, my friends brought in a book. I had to ask the nurses for definitions of the most simplistic words. I don’t read as fast as I once did, but I still read. One f the secretaries shared her daughter’s college paper on and it took me hours to help. This is when I learned I could write the words but not necessarily have them verbally. Now I try to use things like word of the day, a dictionary, and sometimes when I read on my smart device, I can look a word up. I may not always remember the word but I know it’s there somewhere. And like your husband I can write and type much better - like nothing’s wrong.
I had a “pop” sound somewhere around the 18th month post rupture and finally heard the thoughts in my head. It was very weird to be able to write without the thought in my head first. I still can’t visualize, though that pop had given me a picture of a horse’s front leg. I think that pop was my artery completing the rerouting, but medically I don’t really know. I have two more visualizations after the two year mark, our old lab wagging her tail and looking at me for the last time, and a dog that was shot in the head and survived coming to see me when we were both at the vet’s. Meaningful images, those last two, got no clue where my brain was for the horse’s leg.
It also took me awhile to accept I won’t work in my field anymore. One thing that made it apparent was trying to figure out a plumbing issue - it took three days for me to realize the plumber had cut the pipe a bit too short. If I couldn’t figure out a simple plumbing issue, how could I help families problem solve their issues? And I have learned that people having verbal conflict effects my aphasia.
I don’t know about the throwing up. I was told that if having headaches, throwing up and/or neck stiffness, I needed to go to the ER. I have also been told to just go to the ER at WFBH and not my local ER because the local doesn’t have the technology that the hospital has that did my coiling. One of the local ER doc’s had said I was drug seeking, partner called triage nurse and off we went to WFBH, and I was having vasospastic headaches. Benedryl, phenegren?, and something else helped to take care of it as well as the second coiling. They found another aneurysm had developed behind the original multi lobed rupture. So I would recommend calling the surgeon who did the procedure for your husband’s rupture.
