On November 5th, 1999, I received a call from my brother-in-law's mother. The most frightening call I had ever received. My 34 year old sister, Winnie, whom I am very very close to, was in the hospital. She had collapsed in the parking lot of Disneyland. She had complained of a headache earlier in the day. The ambulance arrived and took her to a nearby hospital. They did a CT scan and noted that there was hemorrhaging. Subarachnoid hemorraging. The angiogram confirmed she had an aneurysm. It was pushing up against her optic nerve.
The next morning they did surgery, six long hours. She came out of it ok. The next day she was awake and could recognize who we were, but she was agitated and restless. The following day she became unresponsive. They did another CT scan to determine what was causing this. They found that she had fluid on the brain and was experiencing vasospasms. They called in a specialist from L.A. and she went in for surgery again. It was very difficult to see her on the machines and not be able to "talk" to her.
A week later she woke up, and when her tube came out she began to talk about things that we either had no clue about, or things that were from so far in the past, such as my father coming to see her ( He passed away 8 years ago...suffered from two aneurysms within 14 years of each other). When asked what her address was she would give our old old address from our house we lived in as kids. For a while she did not recognize her 2 year old daughter. It was so awful, but I still had faith that she would get through this. She was transferred to a rehab hospital where she continued to improve and within 3 weeks (December 10th) was discharged home.
She has just begun her occupational and Physical therapies and will begin Speech therapy soon. There are many gaps in her memory still, but there are so many daily improvements. She refuses to be in a wheelchair when she goes anywhere. I think her stubbornness has helped her fight this so well. She may not be the exact same as she used to be, but I am just so grateful to have her still in my life. I may have been "cheated" by having my father taken from me at the age of 17, but I am blessed a million times over to still have my sister, my best friend with me today.