In the beginning......
August 2015 had started off to be a great month. In fact, it was going to be a great year. I had turned 30 in April and celebrated by climbing the story bridge and had to begin to pursue my life long dream, besides being a mum. I started my diploma in nursing.
The 15th August is a day I will never forget. I had finished celebrating my daughters 8th birthday and had gone to see my mum. I was chatting away to her when I felt the strongest pain I had ever felt before, and mind you I had already given birth twice! it felt like I had been struck by lightning. I had seen a doctor who told me it was a very serious migraine and gave me something to ease the pain but it never really did......
Two days later my husband took me to the hospital. I was given morphine which stopped the pain and a CT scan to see what was happening in my head. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared on the scan or in my blood work. The doctor suggested to me that their may be a ten percent chance I did have a bleed in my brain and wanted to give me a lumber puncture to make sure. At 30 I was young and the odds were in my favour that there was a 9/10 chance their wasn't a bleed. I declined and took my chances and went home.
I spent the next week eating pain killers but nothing would get rid of my "migraine". A week after this lightning headache I went back to hospital and begged for an answer. I was taking a mixture of 16 pain killers a day that would bring my pain to a dull ache. on the 24th August I had an answer to my prayers, I was given the cause to my pain. I had a sub arachnoid haemorrhage which was being fed by a malformation of blood vessels.
The next week was a whirlwind of brain angiograms, mri, tablets and treatments. they filled the blood vessels feeding the bleed with onynx or as described to me "glue and coils".
My migraines were gone. I could get back to my normal life. I returned to study! A mri six months after the procedure would see my progress......
The scan had come and gone and I was summoned to the doctor. cracks had began to appear in the onynx and fears that could lead to my brain having another bleed. So they needed to fill the cracks. It was explained to me worse case scenario that they would not be able to preform the procedure as they wouldn't know until I was under anaesthetic, I may have a stroke or death. these were all rare occurrences and I need to see my kids grow up. They were going to use ethanol to burn the cracks shut. They played in my brain before and nothing went wrong so why should now be any different.....
When I woke up I new something was wrong straight away, I could not move my left shoulder, arm and hand. When they realised that the ethanol had burnt closed blood vessels that supplied blood to the nerves that control my left arm, hand and shoulder they were devastated. It was soul crushing to be told "we caused some brain damage. I am sorry but it means you have had a stroke and we cant tell how severe it is."
But this was only to be the start of my journey.....