My Brain Surgery- Arizona

I'm not sure exactly what happened but my uncle heard of a high end surgeon that specializes in brain surgery on pregnant women. My on or husband made arrangements with the Dr. I was let out of inpatient after a few weeks and was home (inWymount) for about a day before flying to AZ for my surgery with Dr Spetzler (sp?)

Before my surgery I got many calls from people I knew wishing me luck and saying they love me. I think it was in case I didn't survive the surgery. I listened to their voicemails and left the talking to Stephen. I didn't want people to hear my voice post stroke because it changed so much and I knew how hard it was to understand me. Virtually impossible. Luckily when I was still in UT Stephen set up a group for me on facebook. There people I knew were in formed of my condition and they could give me well wishes there. Plus they could "hear" what I had to say since I didn't reject the idea of me typing.
That's still a struggle for me even now.

While I recovered from surgery I stayed in the ICU. Stephen often took walks so the hospital when I was otherwise occupied. On a walk he saw a blond rock star come in with hushed staff. I was in my ICU room and the staff brought in Brett Michaels. That was the first time I had heard of him and I was indifferent to the whole thing.

They shaved a surprisingly small patch of hair and used dissolve-able stitches to close it up.
I fully expected to be my uninjured self after the cav. mal. was removed. That was about 3 yrs ago...yeah right.

After the surgery it was obvious that taking out the cav mal wasn't going to*fix* me so I thought I'd be generous and give myself til Nolan was born to recover. That didn't happen either. Later my goal was to walk unassisted before Nolan walked. Wrong again.

The morning after my surgery I was in the ICU recovering. I woke up with intense- no, beyond intense stomach pain. They called in a maternity nurse and lo and behold I was in labor about 5 months early. My husband got the call while still in the hotel room he and my mom booked for my hospital stay. Luckily I responded well to the medicine that stops labor so Nolan came just 10 days shy of his due date- full term.

I was In the ICU for a couple days with constant supervision and hooked up to a whole lot o f machines monitoring stuff. Then I was moved to a private room on the Neuro floor. My mom and Stephen took turns being with me and staying the night. There I discovered that if I stayed upright long enough to eat I puked my brains out so I had to be fed while laying down. Flying back to UT was not going to happen soon so the three of us were stranded.

I stayed in my Private room for about a week awaiting approval of insurance that would work out of state. After I was cleared I did inpatient PT and OT. The main goal was to get well enough to ride a plane to UT. I did therapy there for about 2 weeks then I was cleared to fly.

When I did rehab in AZ I had a rehab roommate which meant Stephen

At the time I only had BYU student insurance which didn't cover a lot of expenses. My mom and Randy were very generous with their funds but I'm not completely sure how the funding worked. I just focused on not dying. This was another testament to me to always have good insurance no matter your health. Also Stephen didn't work at all during this  time because I needed him with me so we were without income for a few months while medical bills piled on. Luckily we had some savings and very kind people bail us out. Thank goodness.

I could now kinda feed myself as long as I had a thick fork cover and food I could stab and bite sized. I only used my left hand to eat but I told myself I'd be a righty when this was all over. I was right for once. Whenever I ate anything I made such a mess that I needed something to cover my whole front to avoid ruining my clothes

When we flew back to UT I did therapy at a series of rehab places leading to now.