+ 365 Day 75

Today is Monday

As well as being Monday today is the day we got the results of my auntie's brain scan.

To recap:

My aunty was taken into hospital with stomach pains, severe bloating, slurred speech and general all over pain. Whilst in hospital her condition deteriorated rapidly - she was diagnosed with a chest infection and pneumonia and intubated in ICU.

Due to her condition they made the decision to put her into a medically induced coma.

This was a bad idea

Since being in the coma they haven't been able to wake her - they found that her kidneys had stopped working so put her on dialysis, but this didnt wake her up, they then discovered she was going into multiple organ failure: liver and pancreas also not working. They couldn't work out why. Then they found that her platelets were not working properly so no oxygen was getting to anywhere in her body and her whole body turned blue!

They have now kind of fixed the platelets issue and are working on the organs to be working more efficiently.

They did a brain scan to see if she had any bleeds on the brain or a stroke as 2 days before she was hospitalised she fell and banged her head.

We were prepared for the worse - they had made it clear if brain scan showed no activity then they would be switching off the machines and we as a family agreed with this.

However the news is very good - the brain scans showed no bleed and no evidence of stroke (although they do want to relook at them to check for more subtle damage). The consultant believes she has a 50/50 chance of pulling through. She is at risk of bleeds and if she does bleed she will bleed out and also at risk of septicemia - if either of these things happen then the prognosis is grim, however if they dont happen then the prognosis is good.

They said if she does come out of this its going to take a good 18-24 months for her to recover - she will need physio, speech and language therapy and probably be on dialysis / require a kidney transplant.

We are taking it one day at a time and we are taking the small victories as they come and therefore today's positive is that through technology and science - she is still there and still fighting and as long as there's hope there is a chance.