So... I made this for Warren to mark the second anniversary of his brain aneurysm. That he survived is a miracle. That he made a complete recovery with no discernable brain damage is even MORE of a miracle (is there such a thing?).
Below is the email I sent out to let people know what had happened. I don't wish the experience of wondering if your best friend is going to make it through the night on anyone. Not even my worst enemy.
*****
Well, I hate mass emails but i just felt the need to reach out to folks that I haven't talked to in a while.... some of you may already have heard this already, some of you are hearing it for the first time.
Yesterday, Tuesday, warren came back from a run and basically told me he had to go to the emergency room. He had unbearable pain in his head. We went to the emergency room, had a CAT scan and then blah blah blah... basically he had something called a subarachnoid hemorrhage (not sure if I'm spelling that right) - a ruptured aneurysm (again, forgive me for not spellchecking) in his brain.
This is bad. Really really bad. HOWEVER, he was in a doctor's care within an hour of the rupture, he is in otherwise excellent health (yay, running), and he's strong. These are all excellent and definitely in his favor. He had surgery this morning - his neurosurgeon is a runner, which for some odd reason is very comforting to all of us - we've already snagged the man with the magic hands some new running shoes....
anyway, the surgery went as well as we could have hoped, and now we have to wait a few days or so for something called vasospasm - basically, stroke. It's more likely than not that he will have vasospasm, but they are doing everything they can to prevent/minimize them.
When he's not sleeping, he's completely lucid (a little groggy from the meds), knows exactly what is going on, is cracking jokes with the nurses, giving me messages to send to his office to 'take care of business', etc.
What caused it? He was probably born with the weakness. The docs say it was going to happen, nothing would have prevented it. I'm just glad he was close to home and not in Utah (where he was last week) or Spain (where he was a few months ago) or running some trail in the middle of the night in Oregon (which was where he planned to be next week...)
So, I'm just sharing because you all a)would want to know and b) we could use your prayers and thoughts.
Warren's parents are here, as are mine. My friend Katie is bossing me around and generally taking care of just about everything.
It's been therapeutic for me to just type this and hit "send."
Thanks for understanding. I'm not really all that accessible. If you email me, try to email me at xxxxx. I'll keep you posted. Thanks in advance for your prayers and support.
*****

2 comments:
Amazing cake + Amazing story. The obligatory "tasty brains!" joke will have to take a backseat to just being so glad he is well. Here's to all noodles!
Tasty brains indeed!
Hee hee! I marvel at the fact that we can (and do, often) joke about his brain these days. Lucky, lucky, lucky!
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