Support Karen's Stroke Recovery Journey

Anyone that doesn't know, my mom (Karen Karen Smith Blackburn) had a stroke and is in the hospital.

This all started Wednesday June 4th

Wednesday

Morning she woke up with a migraine. At around 10 am, she asked my sister to take her to the hospital because she was dizzy. When getting ready to go, she began to slur her speech and one side of her face dropped. Abby and Mickey got her to the hospital very fast where they started running tests and taking scans. They said she had a stroke in her cerebellum and she needed to be transferred to a university with a better neuro team. They got her transferred and stable.

Thursday

She was super sleepy but stable. She passed her physical therapy and it was looking like things were getting better. They just wanted to finish tests to find the cause. They were thinking it was from something called fibromuscular dysplasia. Thursday night was stable.

Friday

She seemed a lot more reactive. The repeat scan showed she had 2 strokes; they just didn't see the second one on the first scan. But she was talking. During the evening, she started not making sense. We got the doctor and her reflexes weren't working and her face was numb. They rushed her for more imaging. They said the second stroke had completed. They put her in the ICU to monitor her.

Saturday

They found a bleed on her 4 am scan and at 7 am she stopped being responsive to painful stimuli. They kicked my dad out and said it was now life-threatening. They put in a breathing tube and went to get more scans and found she had a 3rd stroke in her brain stem. They got her stable and continued the search for what was causing all of this. They now believe that she doesn't have fibromuscular dysplasia but an infection and that is what is causing it. So they started antibiotics and we are praying that that will work.

Update

There is another bleeding. They are going to do a repeat scan tomorrow. They are sure that it is the vascular constriction problem. They believe that it was her medicine for her depression and anxiety that caused it. They lightened her sedation this morning and she started trying to sit up to take her tube out. They are in with respiratory right now to decide if they can take it out. If she passes the test, they'll be taking her breathing tube out.

They want to rule out meningitis with a spinal tap.

Morning update: She does not have meningitis. She's been a lot more alert today. Acute care, here we come!

They got her sitting, then standing, and transferred to a wheelchair to go work in the physical therapy room. She does need a lot of support to do it, but she was able to get up. They moved us to acute care.

She is stable enough to transfer to inpatient rehabilitation, just waiting on insurance to approve it.

They moved her to the rehabilitation unit. She is now stable, but this is just the beginning of the battle. She will need lots of physical therapy to regain normal function levels. They are hopeful for a full recovery in time.

Now we are out of the woods, we are realizing this is going to cost a lot of money because this all happened as her insurance was starting over and she has a high deductible. So, I set this up in hopes of getting help for my dad to cover the out-of-pocket expenses.

Thank you