Serenity
Serenity Luedke is married to Brian Luedke. She is a mother of 11 children, 6 of which were adopted. Prior to her illness she worked as a pediatric nurse practitioner in the ICU department of Nebraska Medical Center.She was hospitalized with a virus back in December, released briefly followed by another two month hospitalization that began in January until March. The virus attacked parts of her inner ear and brain affecting her vision, hearing, equilibrium and ability to stand or walk. It has been a learning curve for everyone especially the youngest children who are 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 and 13 years old. She faints with any loud noises including basic daily sounds like a flushing toilet, sneeze, cough, or vacuum cleaner. It makes talking on the phone or in person very hard as she hears 1000x louder than what we hear in one ear, and is completely deaf in the other. She uses circles on the wall in order to re-train her brain and eyes to focus so that she does not pass out. Serenity has not been able to handle visits with her children for increments of longer than 20 minutes without feeling very nauseous, dizzy or fainting but is constantly trying to stretch herself to be around her family more and more and misses them dearly. Currently Serenity is in constant rehab, and primarily wheel chair bound unless assisted with a person and a walker. We are all very hopeful she will walk again one day but many tests are still being ran to determine her prognosis. Although, the family is considering a second opinion ~the most recent round of testing has revealed that there are a possibility of three things going on with her. A new CT scan is showing that she has Superior Semi-Circular Canal Dehiscence better know as SSCD syndrome in both ears, along with the viral labrynthitis which is the initial virus they thought started the damage and she probably also had a perilymph fistula (a hole in the inner ear system) which drained out all the fluids causing the severe dizziness and nausea.