God is with us at all times.
In 1989 I had a brain aneurysm (subarachnoid hemorrhage).
I was 24 years old. I want to tell my story to help other survivors and
their families.
I want to give hope to those who are in need of encouragement, for mine
is a story of a miracle that I believe God wants me to share. I've struggled
for years over whether I wanted to share my story with the world or not.
My mother has often told me that I should. I'm ready now.
This is my story...
On the morning of April 23rd 1989, at the age of 24, I woke up with a headache. I had breakfast and decided it would be a "couch potato" day. My fiancé however had to go to work. We both worked at my parents store. They own a service station/convenience store. He left for work and I decided to try to sleep off my headache. A while later I woke up feeling much worse. The headache had turned into a classic migraine with broken glass images and flashing lights. I got up to go to the bathroom and I couldn't see anything. My sight was gone. I made it to the phone and somehow managed to dial the number of my parents place. My fiancé answered the phone and I asked him to come home right away because I was feeling worse. I told him I couldn't see anything.
He arrived at our apartment about 15 minutes later and surprisingly I was feeling a bit better and I could see again.We sat and talked for a while then I asked him to go to the store to pick up a couple of videos to watch and some snacks. He was only gone about 15 to 20 minutes but by the time he returned the migraine was back. I decided to do what I had always done with a migraine and that was to lay in a dark room and try to sleep. I slept for a couple of hours and went back to the couch to watch a movie. The rest of that day is a blur to me, but this is what I've been told by everyone...
I apparently sat up on the couch and grabbed the back of my head screaming in pain. I remember it feeling like someone had driven an axe in the back of my head.I went into convulsions. That's when my fiancé called an ambulance and called my parents. I must have come out of the convulsions while he was on the phone with my Father because I remember giving him hell for calling them. I didn't want them to worry about me.
I asked my fiancé to help me to the bathroom. I won't gross you out with the details of what happened in that bathroom, but let's just say my body was letting go from both ends.
I remember the ambulance attendants coming into the bathroom and I remember one saying "you're not feeling too well are you"? I remember thinking to myself "that's an understatement" They asked me a few questions and put me on the stretcher. I remember telling my my fiancé not to forget my purse. They had to carry me down a huge flight of stairs and I remember thinking...God I hope they don't drop me. They put me in the back of the ambulance.That was the last thing I remember of that day.
My Father was at home working the store and watching my very old Grandfather who lived with us. My Dad called my Mom who was in town at the bingo. She immediately came to the hospital. They had taken me to our local hospital which is pretty small. They examined me and it was determined by one doctor that I was having an aneurysm. The doctor told my Mother and fiancé that they couldn't help me there and they would have to take me to another hospital 2 hours away. The doctor explained what was happening to me and my Mother called my Dad right away. When my Dad got to the hospital the doctor told them that I wouldn't make it to the other hospital and that they should get the family gathered.
God had other plans for me.
I made it to that hospital, although I was later told that I had to be revived a few times on the way. When we reached the hospital, they examined me. My parents told me that I was screaming at the top of my lungs and cursing my head off at everyone around me. The neurosurgeon told my parents that I had a huge blood clot on the side of my head that had to be relieved right away. He also told them that he hoped the aneurysm was in the same spot so it could be clipped right away.
They operated on me to release the pressure of the blood clot but the aneurysm was at the base of my brain. The neurosurgeon had been up for over 24 hours operating on other patients and told my parents that he was too tired to perform such a delicate procedure and they didn't have an operating room available anyway. He assured them that I was in stable condition and they rescheduled my surgery for 3 days later.
Needless to say I don't remember any of this because of the heavy pain medication I was on. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for my parents to go through. Being a mother myself now, I can only think it must have been their worst nightmare.
3 days came and went. The day of the surgery, most of my family had gathered at the hospital. My brother had flown in from out west, aunts, uncles, cousins, and even my ex husband and some of my close friends were all there. The operation lasted longer than the doctor said it would, which worried everyone. It was only supposed to take 6 hours but lasted 8. When it was over the doctor came out and told everyone I was very strong (apparently I was still fighting them right up until they knocked me out), and that they had clipped the aneurysm and they only found one. He explained that the next few days would be critical because they didn't know what side effects I would have. My parents were told before the operation (and they had to sign off on this) that there was a chance that I would in a coma, have brain damage, be paralyzed and a ton of other bad possibilities. But the doctor assured them that if I didn't have the operation I would die.
I remember waking up in the intensive care unit and a nurse asking me if I knew who the man was sitting at my bedside. At that point I could still see out of one eye. I looked over at him and replied "of course I do, that's my Dad!". I don't think I've ever seen my Dad smile so big in my life as he did that day.
I still had no idea what I had been through. The nurse asked me a bunch of questions like, where are you? what is your name? how old are you? where do you live? I got all of them right but for some reason I thought I was at work in my parents store and not in a hospital. (It took a couple of days for that to sink in.). One nurse even asked me what my Social Insurance Number (same as a SSN) was and I told him with no problems. He said..."you're fine! I don't even know mine by heart!"
I remember looking at my parents when they told me what I had been through and thinking...no way that didn't happen to me! I guess I must have slept a lot over the next few days because I only remember bits and pieces. The nurses kept coming in every hour and asking me the same old questions over and over again. I remember getting really tired of that. One day the nurse came in when I was talking to my parents and handed my Mom a paper bag with my hair in it. They wanted to know if I wanted to keep it. I thought that was kind of sweet of them to keep it for me. I had hair down to my lower back before they shaved my head. They only shaved half of my head so the other side was all matted up in the bandages.
My first day of recovery, I had noticed and told the nurse that I couldn't see out of my right eye. I told her that everyone looked like a pizza with purple pepperonis. After a couple more days my eyesight was gone completely in both eyes. I was blind. I spent the next 3 weeks in the hospital. My Dad had to get back home to take care of the business and my Grandfather but he came back often. All of our neighbours pitched in to help him and to let him have free time to come and see me. My Mother never left. She said she wasn't going home without me. She stayed in a motel nearby. She would come and read to me during the day and my Dad bought me a walkman so I could listen to music. They would take me for walks in the hallways but I had to have my eyes covered completely because any type of light would burn my eyes. I couldn't even stand having the curtains open in the room.
I got pretty depressed for a couple of days, but then my uncle called me and said "there was another one of our family members showing them how tough we are". He had been severely burned over 75% of his body in a fire a few years earlier and was in the same hospital as me. They told us all to get the family together because he wasn't going to make it. But he did. I started thinking about how lucky I was to be alive and how wonderful a life I had. My parents are the best parents in the world. They always were and continue to be so.
The doctor wouldn't release me until the huge water bubble that formed on the side of my head went down. So we waited and waited. Finally I woke up one morning and felt the bubble had started getting smaller. A few days later I went home. I was determined to go on with a normal life. I couldn't see anything, they didn't know if my eyesight would return, but I was alive and that's all that mattered. I knew I would adjust to being blind but I never gave up hope that I wouldn't see again. Something inside me told me that I would be fine. And I am. My eyesight started coming back in one eye after about 6 months, but it was a slow process. I couldn't see enough to drive for about a year and a half. I wear glasses now and the vision in my left eye is still blurry. I'm told it will be that way forever.
I've gone on to have 2 beautiful daughters.My oldest was born in 1991 only 2 years after my aneurysm. My baby was born on April 23rd 1994. 5 years to the day after my aneurysm. I was always worried about having another aneurysm because I've heard of many people that have more than one, but the day my youngest was born, the same day I had my aneurysm...I stopped worrying about it. I believe that was God's way of letting me know I will be ok and that he's in control, after all, 2 miracles on the same day. That's something!
Before this happened to me, I always wondered what my purpose in life was. I truly believe it was to be a Mother to my daughters and maybe even an inspiration to those who need a little lift in life.
13 years later...I thank God every single day for everything in my life.
That's my story.
Here are some links that I hope will help answer any questions you have
Aneurysm and AVM support - clicking on brain aneurysm on the left hand menu will bring you to tons of real life stories like mine.
SignContent
and site Copyright ©2002 Connie Hughes. All rights reserved.
Graphics are © by various artists and may not be downloaded from
my site.
Please, visit these sites if you're looking for graphics.