Sister Suzi 4

The day after my sisters surgery she turned 57, I silently wished her a happy birthday. I was in Nanaimo and she was in Vancouver in neuro ICU. It had been 5 days since her aneurysm and we had moved from futile no surgery to dang i guess we best do surgery if she is going to have a chance to continue to survive. now here we sat, waiting to see. It was all up to her, how much fight did she have? how much more could her body handle? surprisingly a lot. She went through infection, she went through three other surgeries. She went through extubating and re intubation to extubating again.

Suzi stayed in neuro icu for just over a month and then they moved her to icu. they figured she was a bit more stable and didn’t need the neuro aspect of it as much. It was when they preformed that final surgery that she really started to show improvements. Our brains naturally produce cerebral fluids and we disperse them naturally, unconsciously. Suzi was no longer able to do this. So the fluid in her brain kept building up, causing her blood pressure to rise and heart rate elevate. from my understanding put her in a place of high risk of stroke. its always scary when the surgeon calls out of the blue. you know your randomly hanging out and then bam you get a call and have to make some crazy decision that alters someone’s life that you love. You can’t help but wonder am i doing the right thing, is this what they would want. am I making the choice based on my needs or hers? I became very clear that my decisions had nothing to do with me and what I wanted, they had everything to do with my sisters best quality of life, even if it meant that i didn’t get to have one with her. I knew this when I signed the DNR, because that was the hardest thing I had to do. it was hard sitting beside her with tubes and shit coming out of her body, it was hard when she wasn’t conscious, however, signing off on her life, that was unbearable and yet I knew I had to do it.. not for me, because it broke me however it was for her. Because I love her that much.

This surgery was the best choice for suzi and am grateful she got it. they put a tubing that ran from back of her ear down to her abdomen which allowed the fluid that was building up in her head to drain continuedly, unconsciously, like the rest of us with a little assistance. I can’t help but smile a little when I write that. I tell her its her new normal, that she is like us but a little more special. Its not a lie, she is special so i never have a hard time saying it or trying to convince her of it. I think because i believe it and can say it with such conviction that she is believing it to be true as well. 🙂 She has improved so dramatically after this last surgery. She was able to come back to Nanaimo and stay in the hospital in our home town. I think it was about a week and a bit she was able to come back. I don’t think that would have been the case without the surgery.. the surgery relived so much pressure and allowed her to start to heal more.