Hi everyone. My mum is 54, a non drinker and non smoker. On 29/03/2015 she was sitting on the toilet when her speech began to slur, she began to fit and vomit, her whole left side drooped and stopped moving, her eyes could not focus and as the ambulance arrived she began to bleed through her nose. She was taken to resus. An emergency CT scan was ordered and they found she had a massive right hand side SAH. She was vomitingl lots including blood in resus and they managed to stabilise her and take her to a specialist neuro critical care unit.
Once in there she was put on life support, she began to open one eye a little and could squeeze her right hand and thrash her right leg about. At this point she had complete left side paralysis, could not talk or open her eyes properly however she could understand what we were saying and respond by squeezing her right hand. She even managed to write with her eyes closed and it was coherent e.g. 'thirsty','drink', 'in pain' etc.
We were told she would die earlier that day as they thought it was an aneurysm and that the bleed was too big. After an angiogram it was found that there was no aneurysm and it is believed her haemorrhage was as a result of hypertension. They told us she was stable and then a few hours later she was sent for another emergency ct scan as she wasn't coming round the way she should be. It showed swelling of the brain and so 20 minutes later she was sent for a right decompressive craniectomy (sorry if my spelling is incorrect!!) After this surgery the swelling did increase quite drastically in size and 9 days on it is still there.
She still cannot talk or move her left side at all. She communicates now with thumbs up and thumbs down. She conveyed the fact she has extreme pain in the right side of her neck. She still hasn't opened her eyes fully but she has managed to write a little again even without sight. She cannot open her jaw at all or poke her tongue out and swallow was tested with a small amount of water but she is not ready. The speech and language therapist has tested her cognitive abilities as have we.
She knows her name, where she is, what has happened, remembers the past, recognises voices and the small amount of faces she can see. She drifts in and out of sleep and it can be very hard to tell if she's awake of just not responding because of the lack of eyes opening. They cannot tell us how well she will recover and I am aware that severe disability could be on the cards. I am only 21 and feel so alone without her to talk to. I do not want to stress her so will not let her know I am so devastated.
I haven't read of any cases that are similar in terms of ages and severity and wondered if anybody has been through something similar? I know all brains are different and a prognosis is individual but just knowing somebody understands this and can maybe share their experience and recovery would really help my family and I to come to terms with what has happened and to maybe give us hope/an idea of what the future may look like.
Thanks to you all and best wishes for your/your loved ones recovery
Cat