Bridgette's Recovery

Dear Family & Friends,

We all love Bridgette and know how much she does for other people. From working at Habitat for Humanity with joy and relishing the opportunity to serve her community, to taking care of her kids, grandkids, husband, and parents, Bridgette is always there for people that need her with kind words and a helping hand. She’s loving, caring, sensitive, and empathetic almost to a fault.

Well, now Bridgette needs our help getting back up on her feet after suffering a severe stroke one week ago. Over the past week, she has had to undergo two life saving brain surgeries and at least one more in the coming weeks. She is going to need several more weeks in the hospital, and months of therapy to follow.

Thinking through the future:

It is still up in the air if Bridgette is going to be able to walk without assistance, make use of her left arm, or regain full speech, just to name a few. To regain that functionality, she will need physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy multiple times per week. 

Outside of therapy Bridgette is going to need the following:

-Help covering monthly bills so Clay can take off work to care for Bridgette
-Help with unknown medical bills and countless medical expenses.


If you can find it in your heart to help our family and ease the financial burden  of the mounting hospital bills, upcoming therapy costs, and necessary life adjustments  we must undertake, we truly appreciate it. If we had numbers, we’d give them but everything is still very fresh and updates will come when we have them.

The family is beyond grateful for any donations during this uncertain time. We have included links to Apple Pay and Venmo for your convenience as well. 

Apple Pay: (361) [phone redacted]
Venmo: @Bridgette-Breauxhale or  (361) [phone redacted]

GOD BLESS Y’ALL & WE LOVE Y’ALL

The Story:

On the 20th of December, Wife, Mother, and Grandmother Bridgette Hale fell victim to a stroke. Seemingly harmless, she recovered in just 10 minutes and the EMS had no basis for “making her” go to the hospital. Mom thought everything was all right, but husband Clay wasn’t so sure. Clay checked on her all night and things seemed normal as mom let the puppies outside to use the restroom just fine that morning on the 21st. However, shortly after they decided to sleep in a bit that Saturday morning, mom had a MAJOR stroke and this one did not last just 10 minutes.

The doctors called it a dissection of the carotid artery, which limited blood flow to her brain in conjunction with a clot towards the back of the brain on her right side which controls a lot of her left side sensation and motor function. The doctors at Doctors Regional Hospital in Corpus Christi were able to perform emergency surgery and save her life by removing 2/3rds of the clot. The doctors could not stint the dissected artery because of how much it had cut and the risk outweighed the benefit of restorative surgery. Apparently, God designed a little backup plan for the brain in case that carotid artery happened to fail, and mom could very well rely on that while the artery is healing.

From that point on, mom was responsive and communicative although slightly impaired, and the doctors were hopeful her swelling would decrease. Her cognitive state waned back and forth from 13-17 NIH and we did our best to pray with friends and family as well as encourage mom to hang in there. Over the next several days we watched her CT scans closely for some sort of progress, hoping the centerline of her brain would stay as close to center as possible despite increasing swelling. This was important because the further the midline gets from the center it indicates more swelling, and as the brain swells it begins to be compressed within the skull and can cause permanent brain damage or death of not quickly resolved.

On the morning of the 26th around 2:00am, the doctor called it and said the swelling had increased too much and caused mom to fall into a comatose state. She was no longer opening her eyes or speaking, her right and left side had both stopped responding to stimulation and the doctors had to act urgently. In order to save her life, they had to perform a craniectomy, removing half the top of her skull and storing within her abdomen for safe keeping, which is done to allow the brain room to swell and not damage it-self. That surgery was a success and mom regained consciousness fairly quickly starting our recovery clock back to day one. Since then she has started to look better and better each day.

As of this moment, Bridgette is not physically able to eat or drink anything, and they are preparing to put in a feeding tube in order to assist her with nutrition. Before they can start any sort of therapy, Bridgette will need a helmet and lots of assistance to protect her brain until they are able to safely reattach her skull. We must wait for the swelling to subside and the brain to start healing. We do not know what the days ahead will bring and we know we have a long journey ahead. But with the hand of God and the help of our family and friends, we will get through this difficult time. In the meantime, we ask everyone to continue praying for her and our family.