Thank You for All of Your Support and Prayers

Well, what can I say and where do I start?? I keep hoping this is all just a bad dream. I decided to create this blog mostly for Stephi in hopes that she will be well enough to someday read it and have a journal of her battle. I hope this will be an easy way for our family to share Stephi's progress with you. Right know all of our phones are ringing off the hook with well wishes and hopes of hearing some good news. We try to answer all of the voicemail and text messages and hope we don't leave anyone hanging without an update, but there are so many people who are praying for her, we don't want to miss anyone. We are all struggling and the tears keep coming, but we all continue to pray hard. I will try to give you the best information I have, but I give it to you as her sister and not a nurse.

Stephanie is 26 years old. She has 2 little children at home. Christopher is 7 and Olivia is 3. I am the oldest in our family (34), then there is our brother Josh who is 31, Jennifer is 27, and then there is little Stephi. She was the baby and unfortunately for Steph, she will always be over-protected by all of us. We usually (way too often) offer her too much advise, even when she isn't asking for it. So you can see how this is very difficult for all of us. She is a daughter, a sister, an auntie, a mother, a girlfriend, a co-worker, and a best friend to all of us in one way or another. We all want her back!

I will start with sharing the facts of what happened and what we know so far. Steph had been struggling with a migraine headache since last Monday. We usually talk everyday, but I had last talked to her Thursday around 3pm when she was picking her little boy up from school. She looked well. She said the headache was still there but not as bad and she was planning to work that night. Steph has struggled with migraine headaches since she was 5 or 6 years old so she just thought that was what she was dealing with. She was scheduled to work in the birthing center for a 7pm-7am shift on Thursday night, and she went to work as planned.

I received a phone call from the Family Birth Center staff around midnight/12:30 ish. They said they had taken Stephi to the emergency room after she felt a sharp pain in her head followed by an immediate loss of feeling/control of the left side of her body. The staff had said she declined fairly rapidly after she had felt that pain. When I arrived in the ER she was intubated, sedated, and lets be honest I'm an OB nurse I really had no idea what was going on in that room. Not to mention that I was in complete shock and hysterically crying. All I could understand in those minutes was that she had what sounded like a massive hemorrhage on the right side of her brain. They could not tell me that she would live, and no one could say that if she did live she would not be paralyzed. Did a 26 year old just have a massive stroke??? Can the story get any worse? The answer to that is Yes! She is 16 weeks pregnant. We were a mess. I kissed her and told her I loved her and they flew her to UW hospital in Madison, WI.

Denise and Chandra (if you reading this) thank you for staying with her. Especially when my husband and I and Stephi's boyfriend Jay couldn't be there right away. It had been the middle of the night and no one could hear their phone. When I see the two of you again I will probably cry - but hopefully this time happy tears. Both of you saved my sisters life! To Tracy, Wade, Amy in the ER (I know there are more of you) you are all amazing. You saved Christopher and Olivia's mommy! To Stephanie's ER doctor (I'm sorry I can't remember your name). Thank you for sending her to the UW. You saved her mom and dad's youngest daughter. Without all of you, she would not have survived.

Steph had arrived at the UW and was immediately taken to surgery under the care of Dr Mustafa Baskaya. Our mom, our sister Jen, and our brother Josh live in Janesville so they were able to meet her there sooner than I was. Her boyfriend Jay went straight to UW after her helicopter left St. Clare's and got there in a couple hours. I ran home, packed my things, snatched her kids out of their slumber at 1:30 am and headed for Madison. I had not had any reassuring news to allow myself to leave her kids behind. I thought that if anything was going to happen to her they needed to be close, even if they weren't going to be able to see her. Stephi's bleed had increased by 30% in the time from leaving St. Clare's to arriving in Madison. There was an enormous amount of pressure on her brain and we were told the chances of her survival were low and that if she did survive the surgery she would most likely need a feeding tube and probably not be able to do much for herself. What kind of a life would that be and what about her babies?

Around 10am on Friday, my family had finally had some news. Stephi was a fighter, and Dr Baskaya and his neuro team are miracle workers. She was out of surgery and her neuro assessments were reassuring at that time. Stephanie had some kind of lesion (anomaly) on the right side of her brain that they thought could have been there since birth. The vessels had intertwined and tangled around it and had finally burst. The news was that they had gotten everything out that had been causing trouble for her. They would do another angiogram to make sure everything was still OK and continue to monitor her. She was moving her right side and answering questions appropriately by squeezing a hand or using other non verbal communication. I'm sure people in other units of the UW hospital could hear our family's sighs of relief, but she was not out of the woods quite yet.

Steph was moved to the Neouroscience Intensive Care Unit where she will continue to be for what sounds like a couple of weeks followed by step down care and intensive therapy. The next few days will be critical for her and no one really knows what the extent of her mobility will be. She is intubated, heavily sedated, and they have removed the right side of her skull while her brain continues to be swollen. I was told that they will replace it once the swelling goes down.

There is a drain which looks like IV tubing draining spinal fluid that comes from her head and drains into a bag. There is another Jackson Prat drain that comes from her head. She has a PICC line. She has a few other IV/arterial lines in her arms. Her room is full of monitors that I have never seen, there are sounds that I have never heard, her long pretty hair is gone, her head is wrapped like a mummy and she is still the most beautiful girl I know! Keep fighting Steph!!