New daughter

[Cairenn]

Brian, you wouldn't believe how far this heartrending story has spread. I'm linked here via a message on my EverQuest Guild Board.

It's not completely comparable, but ... my paternal Grandfather had a stroke in his 80's. While he lost a lot of mobility, his personality, his sense of self and family, it all came back. I know from reading your posts that that is one of your main concerns, that she doesn't remember her family.

Hang in there. My prayers are with you and your family. And congratulations on the new wonderful little bundle of joy.

[darkmiasma]

I'm linked from HardOCP as well ...

Congratulations on your daughter, and I wish you, your wife, and your kids the best ... I will add your family to my prayers tonight.

[RagingSamster]

Howdy Brian, sending prayers from over @ [H]ardOCP. God works miracles! you have a lot of folks praying for you and your family. I'm glad you have close folks around to support you, don't hesitate to use them, they get far more from it than you realize (funny how that works out!) Again best wishes, and continued prayers coming your way!

[IronChefMoto]

Hi, Brian,

I picked up on this story from the [H] a day or two ago. Just this afternoon I contributed to the [H] raffle in your honor. I hope my meager contribution can help you take your 4 kids out for McDonald's or buy some flowers for your wife. Something to keep yours and your family's mind off what may be troubling times ahead.

As the brother of a kid who has grown up with debilitating spina bifida, another neurological disease/condition, I can only give you the following advice -- take each day one at a time, and remember that, regardless of mental state or physical ability, the person you know as your wife is still there. And she will still give you the joy and laughter that she did before the stroke. My brother still does, and he's been through 22 years of ups and downs with his condition.

And laughter is key. If you can get her to laugh, you'll feel a helluva lot better. So will your kids. I know that, when I was 7 or 8 and my brother had been born, I felt most connected to him the day I got him to laugh in his crib. He felt to me, for the first time since his birth, like a little brother.

Tell your wife the worst joke that you can think of. Whatever can make her laugh. Trust me.

Take care, God bless, and keep the thread alive as best as you can.

IronChefMorimoto

[nater]

I am sure everyone has seen this, but just to make sure, the [H]ardOCP raffle for brian...
http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/

[Cage]

Hiya Brian,

I'm here via [H]ardOCP.

My prayers go out to you and your family. May God's love embrace your family, and may He give you the courage and strength to meet the challenges ahead. You are never alone.

[bat]

A little think from another part of the world (France), I hope everything will get better soon. It is pretty interesting to see what the word "community" mean, that is what is happening here. Bye.
Bat.

[macklin01]

Brian,

I just wanted to register to send you a quick note of encouragement. I've been reading this thread since some of the seniors at the overclockers forums brought it to our attention earlier this week but hadn't had the chance to register as yet.

Please know that you are in the thoughts and prayers of many (including mine). Your demonstrated strength is a shining testament to your character, and it impresses the heck out of me. Godspeed to Heather's recovery, and God's blessing to you and your children! -- Paul

[RiPpLeeFFecT]

I drifted over here from HardOCP and FrostyTech.

I put in for the Raffle for your family's benfit, however, I also felt compassion for your situation and just sent some directly to you too.

Money is tight now, but I know you can use it better than I.

My unceasing prayer is with you and your family

I'm starting a family this year (getting married in July...Just purchased my first house this month) and I can not even begin to imagine the difficultly you feel. Stay strong.

Jason Bair
Palmdale, CA

[eroder]

Strength
planetmars.co.za
South Africa

[Jabo]

Brian, congratulations mate, beautiful little princess was born I can see!
I am sorry to hear your better part is going over rough patch.
My sons birht was very traumatic for both my wife and him, I was there for 20 hours beside her and I can tell you that was the most universe shaking experience of my life, nothing seemed to be the same any more (in good way and in very little not so good way ).

About hommeaoraging, my uni girl firend had a massive car accident while going skiing. She hit door post safety belt mounting with the side of her head (the most vulnerable place). She was in coma for over 3 months and was given no chances of recovery. After two years she came back to finish her degree....

Have faith man, we are with you, she will be all right.
My whole family are doctors and I am quite versed with medical stuff.
Try to get an outside consultant to look into your wife's case if possible. It is alwyas good to have more than one opinion in any all cases.

I have nothing to donate but will contribute in other way.


Kepp your spiits up and rally your family to help you

Best wishes again!

[Yelo]

Saw this on overclockers.com.....

Good luck Brian, my heart goes out out you and your family in a HUGE way !!, I hope everything works out for the best

Good Luck

[nikhsub1]

Brian I can only echo what has already been said... Be strong for your family and congrats on the baby!

[BaconGrease]

[quote=Brians256] (anyone know how to do comparison shopping on rehab centers?).
[quote]

I'm a rehab doctor, feel free to email me or PM me with any questions.

[AStar617]

Spotted this on 2CPU... best wishes to you and yours at this trying time in your lives.

[shanenine]

I was looking for info on fanless power supplies, followed a link to http://3rotor.homelinux.com/ and saw a link to your post. After reading through the thread I had to register to wish you well.

I don't pray, but you can bet your ass you'll be in my thoughts. Maybe it will help a little bit to know that some guy in MD is wishing good things for you.

[Joe]

Wow, I just checked hypothermia's site the Raffle is already closed for it! Thats damn cool to see that many people getting in on it that fast!

[DaveMode]

Well, I felt I had to register and add to the growing support. I was linked from overclockers.com. My wife is pregnant and it's our first child. We're both nervous about everything and I guess this thread really hits home for us. I wish you both the best.

[Blackeagle]

Brian my heart goes out to you man, hang in there.

I'm shocked I hadn't caught this thread before this. Congrats on the new daughter, I have two of those myself although my youngest is now 17.

My heart goes out to you and your wife. I'd be hard hit if such happened to my wife. I hope she makes a strong recovery. Just don't know what else to say.........

Craig

[BartholemewH]

Congratulations on your daughters arrival Brian!!!

I am dropping in from the Overclockers Australia. Very sorry to hear about the situation faced by you and your wife...

I know to an extent how you are feeling... A friend of mine last week had a car accident. While in hospital on the machines, his brain activity diminished and he died 3 days later, one day before his 21st birthday....

But your wife is already doing MUCH MUCH better! So take heart!

It seems that you are staying very strong for your children, I can't help but admire your courage!

Just one of the thousands in the Hardware/overclocking/gaming community that is thinking of you and your family...

BartholemewH.

[SilversinkSam]

Brian,

Congratulations on the baby!

Hang tough and know allot of us out there are pulling for you. Keep the faith and try to remain strong. I will pray for a speedy recovery of your wife.

Silversinksam

[SiliconAngel]

Hi Brian,

I'm here from Perth, Western Australia, linked by overclockers.com.au. Congratulations on the birth of Deborah - I'm glad she's healthy and well. I just read this entire thread, and its amazing how supportive people can be when someone needs help. Kudos to everyone who has posted here - you're all wonderful people.

Brian, if you lived within driving distance I would put my life on hold for a few weeks and come and help you in any way I could. Unfortunately I don't have a passport atm, so flying there is out of the question. I will be depositing in your paypal account - you need the money more than I do at the moment. You seem like a really nice guy, and its horrible when nice people have bad things happen to them.

If I can make a suggestion, when this is all over, write a book about it. Just whatever you can remember, a few pages at a time. When you've finished it, find a publisher. Nothing touches people more strongly than a true story. Its something you can do while being with your wife and kids at the same time (when she comes home) and gives people some understanding about what its like if something like that happens to them. It also shows people how strong a community we have here in this virtual world. I'll buy a hundred copies, and I'm sure you will get sales from everyone in enthusiast communities all over the 'net.

You may not like the idea - its just a suggestion, and if one day you put virtual pen to paper, fantastic. If its never your gig, forgeddaboudid. I wish you all the best, my thoughts are with you and those of everyone I speak to. I hope your wife has a speedy recovery - I know many people who have had strokes who are all 100% now, so hopefully in the next couple of months it'll all be an unpleasant memory and you and your wife can share in the joy of your new baby girl :-)

God bless, and may you smash life's curve ball for a sensational home run!

[animphette]

hi brian,
i got this link off a website i am a member of called anywebcam.com. we are a great cammunity that post on the message board regularly. what touched me enough to make me join this site was to send you this. Read it to heather, during therapy and whenever you have time alone with her. you stated its like she wasnt there. She is she just needs to take it easy one day at a time. I really wish you all the best. If i could come to your rescue i would . it sounds like your horrible event brought people together from all over the world.
Dont give up. and I hope the message I am sending helps both of you....all my love andrea


A Letter From Your Brain

Hello,

I'm glad to see that you are awake! This is your brain talking. I had to find some way to communicate with you. I feel like I barely survived WWIII and am still not quite all in one piece. That's why I need you. I need you to take care of me.

As time passes and you and I feel better and better, people, even doctors, will tell you that we are fine, "it's time to get on with life." That sounds good to me and probably even better to you. But before you go rushing back out into that big wide world, I need you to listen to me, really listen. Don't shut me out. Don't tune me out. When I'm getting into trouble I'll need your help more than I ever have before.

I know that you want to believe that we are going to be the same. I'll do my best to make that happen. The problem is that too many people in our situation get impatient and try to rush the healing process; or when their brains can't fully recover they deny it and, instead of adapting, they force their brains to function in ways they are no longer able too. Some people even push their brains until they seize, and worse... I'm scared. I'm afraid that you will do that to me. If you don't accept me I am lost. We both will be lost.

How can I tell you how much I need you now? I need you to accept me as I am today... not for what I used to be, or what I might be in the future. So many people are so busy looking at what their brains used to do, as if past accomplishments were a magical yardstick to measure present success or failures, that they fail to see how far their brains have come. It's as if here is shame, or guilt, in being injured. Silly, huh?

Please don't be embarrassed or feel guilt, or shame, because of me. We are okay. We have made it this far. If you work with me we can make it even further. I can't say how far. I won't make any false promises. I can only promise you this, that I will do my best.

What I need you to do is this: because neither of us knows how badly I've been hurt (things are still a little foggy for me), or how much I will recover, or how quickly, please go s-l-o-w-l-y when you start back trying to resume your life. If I give you a headache, or make you sick to your stomach, or make you unusually irritable, or confused, or disoriented, or afraid, or make you feel that you are overdoing it, I'm trying to get your attention in the only way I can. Stop and listen to me.

I get exhausted easily since being hurt, and cannot succeed when overworked. I want to succeed as much as you do. I want to be as well as I can be, but I need to do it at a different pace than I could before I got hurt. Help me to help us by paying attention and heeding the messages I send to you.

I will do my part to do my very best to get us back on our feet. I am a little worried though that if I am not exactly the same... you will reject me and may even want to kill us. Other people have wanted to kill their brains, and some people have succeeded. I don't want to die, and I don't want you to die.

I want us to live, and breath and be, even if being is not the same as it was. Different may be better. It may be harder too, but I don't want you to give up. Don't give up on me. Don't give up on yourself. Our time here isn't through yet. There are things that I want to do and I want to try, even if trying has to be done in a different way. It isn't easy. I have to work very hard, much harder, and I know that you do too. I see people scoff, and misunderstand. I don't care. What I do care about is that you understand how hard I am working and how much I want to be as good as I can be, but I need you to take good care of us, as well as you can do that.

Don't be ashamed of me. We are alive. We are still here. I want the chance to try to show you what we are made of. I want to show you the things that are really important in life. We have been given another chance to be better, to learn what is really important. When it is finally time for our final exit I would like to look back and feel good about what we made of us and out of everything that made up our life, including this injury. I cannot do it without you. I cannot do it if you hate me for the way being injured has affected me and our life together. Please try not to be bitter in grief. That would crush me.

Please don't reject me. There is little I can do without you, without your determination to not give up. Take good care of us and of yourself. I need you very much, especially now.

Love,
your wounded brain

[nexxo]

Just a brief post of support... Dealing with brain injury is difficult at the best of times, but particularly so when you have a new baby to look after as well! I hope your wife will make a good recovery. In fact, as a neuropsychologist working on a brain injury rehabilitation ward (in- and out-patient), I can tell you that these things always look a lot worse in the beginning than they tend to pan out in the long term. Give it time; progress is always slow in the first months.

From what little you mentioned in the forum I cannot form a very detailed picture, and I'm sure you've been explained all this much better in Hospital by the experts who are treating your wife, but just for what it's worth:

The basal ganglia are involved in automatic motor processes, memory, habitual behaviour, drives and basic emotion. The right basal ganglia specifically regulate motor movement in the left part of the body. A bleed in that region tends to affect these functions primarily. The right hypocampus (predominantly visual memory) can be affected as well, and also the visual pathways running past that region, resulting in some loss of left visual field. It is therefore best to sit at your wife's bed on her right side.

On the up-side, if the injury is limited to the basal ganglia, higher cognitive processes should stay unaffected so although your wife will be pretty groggy and disoriented right now, in the long term she should not suffer personality change or significant change in intellectual ability. She may be a bit slower, and left with some memory problems (easily compensated for) and at first, some initiation problems (finding it hard to start actions). She will be very tired a lot. She will probably have some left motor problems, in walking and balance, as well as co-ordinated movement of left arm and leg, but physiotherapy can improve this considerably. Language again will be fine, so although I know I don't have to tell you to keep talking to her, take heart in knowing that at some level she can hear and understand you. Her speech may be affected by left sided motor problems however, so her speech may be slurred at first.

Her brain stem (life-support systems) should stay unaffected, and I imagine doctors will be keeping a close eye on any swelling of the site of injury, so it doesn't press down on the brain-stem structures. This tends to be the main focus of acute management, and they're pretty good at it. Your wife's unconsciousness is, in a way, the brain's way of protecting itself from further damage by lowering its metabolic needs.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I know all you can do is wait, and powerlessness is a terrible thing to feel. But for what it's worth, I'm optimistic about this one. Take care of yourself.

[Brians256]

Originally Posted by nexxo

Just a brief post of support... Dealing with brain injury is difficult at the best of times, but particularly so when you have a new baby to look after as well! I hope your wife will make a good recovery. In fact, as a neuropsychologist working on a brain injury rehabilitation ward (in- and out-patient), I can tell you that these things always look a lot worse in the beginning than they tend to pan out in the long term. Give it time; progress is always slow in the first months.

From what little you mentioned in the forum I cannot form a very detailed picture, and I'm sure you've been explained all this much better in Hospital by the experts who are treating your wife, but just for what it's worth:

The basal ganglia are involved in automatic motor processes, memory, habitual behaviour, drives and basic emotion. The right basal ganglia specifically regulate motor movement in the left part of the body. A bleed in that region tends to affect these functions primarily. The right hypocampus (predominantly visual memory) can be affected as well, and also the visual pathways running past that region, resulting in some loss of left visual field. It is therefore best to sit at your wife's bed on her right side.

On the up-side, if the injury is limited to the basal ganglia, higher cognitive processes should stay unaffected so although your wife will be pretty groggy and disoriented right now, in the long term she should not suffer personality change or significant change in intellectual ability. She may be a bit slower, and left with some memory problems (easily compensated for) and at first, some initiation problems (finding it hard to start actions). She will be very tired a lot. She will probably have some left motor problems, in walking and balance, as well as co-ordinated movement of left arm and leg, but physiotherapy can improve this considerably. Language again will be fine, so although I know I don't have to tell you to keep talking to her, take heart in knowing that at some level she can hear and understand you. Her speech may be affected by left sided motor problems however, so her speech may be slurred at first.

Her brain stem (life-support systems) should stay unaffected, and I imagine doctors will be keeping a close eye on any swelling of the site of injury, so it doesn't press down on the brain-stem structures. This tends to be the main focus of acute management, and they're pretty good at it. Your wife's unconsciousness is, in a way, the brain's way of protecting itself from further damage by lowering its metabolic needs.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I know all you can do is wait, and powerlessness is a terrible thing to feel. But for what it's worth, I'm optimistic about this one. Take care of yourself.

Wow! Why can't the doctors that I have make things this clear? I have dealt with three or four neurologists (no neuropsychologists yet), and none of them told me what the basal ganglia primarily control or what kinds of things to look out for long-term. All they tell me is that they don't know how much she'll recover and to wait.

Unfortunately, she has had two hemmorages (one about the size of a silver dollar in right basal ganglia and one in the left that is twice the size) caused (they think) by an initial thrombosis in the inferior sagital (spelling?) sinus vein that they missed in the first MRV. They only caught it four days after the first stroke in a cerebral angiogram. I can't help but think that if they had not misunderstood the first stroke as a reaction to Reglan or that if they had caught the thrombosis on the second day, that things might be better. They might not have tried clotting therapies like platelets and cryofactor and they might have gotten her on a blood thinner on the FIRST day so that the second stroke wouldn't have happened. I don't think that's malpractice (and I really HATE people that sue over simple mistakes), but I'm still frustrated.

Oh well. Done is done. At this point, I just want my wife to recover. I hope that swelling caused by those hemmorages goes down as they are absorbed and she recovers some of her emotions and initiative. It really hurts to see her so .... flat. Nothing makes her happy or sad. Language is coming back but still includes some things like saying "Crystal Corn Flakes" instead of "Kellog Corn Flakes". Memory isn't good, as you noted, and she had difficulty yesterday with the idea that her mom (dead 16 years) didn't need a sweater.

Physically, she is doing much better. I got to help her walk down a hallway yesterday.