Gail's Story

Mine is a very sad story about when my Mama died from a SAH 8 years ago this August. She was 57 years old and she was at work. She had worked there for 35 years! She was sitting at the break table at lunch and she had a severe pain through the side of her head and she fainted. An ambulance took her to the hospital where me and my Dad met her there. She was awake, but in so much pain in her head when the nurses took her to have dye ran into her brain. While this was going on, she suffered a stroke so they went ahead and put her to sleep. She had 2 aneurysms. One in her left temple and one right between her eyes. They operated on her for several hours and the doctor told us that she should be starting to wake up by morning. That was 11:00 at night. The next morning she wasn't any better. They said she was in a coma. The doctor didn't put in a drainage tube during the surgery so he had to go back in and do so, because she was re-bleeding.

Those were the saddest 6 days of my entire life, watching her leave us like that. The last two days, her temperature was 107.8! I know she could hear us the first 3 days, because when we would talk to her and beg her not to leave us, a tear would roll down her beautiful face. She was so beautiful, even with the staples in the entire side of her head. On the sixth day, she deteriorated further and about 12 hours later, her body just couldn't hold on any longer. Dear God it was hard to let her go.

You know I said that was the saddest days of my life? There were a few more afterwards. After Mama died, my Daddy died too. He just couldn't live without her. He lived 6 months after she died. They had been married since Mama was 13 and he was 17! FOREVER! I really do miss them.... So very much.