|
Vanessa!
Here's a photo of Vanessa (taken in Egypt 2-07)
Many of you have expressed more info on Vanessa's health decline and history - so I thought it would be easiest to have her history in one place!
Vanessa is our oldest daughter - 24 years old - When she was 4 she was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes, but that never held her back. She had an active, normal childhood. Played waterpolo in High School. She started her own business when she was 10 years old selling floral hairclips etc...through Over the Rainbow when I still did my clothing design "thing". She also started her babysitting career at the age of 10 (Tori, our youngest, was born when V was 9 and she became quite adept at childcare!) Vanessa graduated from Evergreen State College in Olympia and then went on to get her Masters in Education from Antioch which is what she was working on finishing up. She was 8 weeks away from completing her Masters - just needed to do her 8 week student teaching stint and complete her thesis (which she started while in Egypt comparing American educations to Overseas educations) . One of the families she nannied for in Olympia moved to Eqypt and Vanessa went for a 4 week stay in 2005 while the mom went out of town on business. They needed her once again in March of 2007 for another Egyptian nanny job.....But, now we have to back up to July of 2006. In 7-06 Vanessa started to experience some tingling in her fingertips and numbness, headaches and dizzy spells. She went to her health clinic and they dismissed her saying it was probably just from doing her blood test pokes in her fingertips.... Two days later she completely lost the feeling in her left arm and we took her to the ER room at Swedish. It was discovered through much testing that Vanessa had had a series of 5 strokes. Luckily none of them were damaging and she fully recovered within a few months. At the time they thought it was a dissection of her carotid artery which caused the strokes even though no trauma had occured to her neck or body. When she wanted to go back to Egypt it was time for her 6 month recheck.
That's when things started to fall apart. It turns out it wasn't a dissection that caused the original sets of strokes but an angiogram determined she had a rare disease called Moya Moya (www.moyamoya.com) which in Japanese means "puff of smoke" which is what the arteries look like on the angiogram! Her insurance company balked at some of the tests that her neurosurgeon Dr. David Newell wanted to do saying she was fine....the time frame for her to travel to Egypt was ticking away and with my encouragement (not the smartest move on my part) she decided to go to Egypt and pursue the moyamoya diagnosis when she returned. There is an artery bypass surgery they perform to reconnect arteries to reestablish blood flow to the brain. She was fine the first 2 weeks of her trip and then started tripping and having clumsy spells and one time actually blacked out. On the plane ride home from Heathrow to Seattle she had another stroke (but didn't tell the stewardesses in fear they'd make her get off the plane!) When she landed she told me what happened and we went straight to the ER room at Swedish. That was on March 3rd...and she's still there! Her brain was too fragile at first to do the bypass surgery. Around day 10 she suffered another round of strokes - this time striking both her right and left sides and leaving her speech and motor skills impaired. Once again....her brain had too much trauma to operate on. We are now in a holding pattern waiting for her brain to recoup.
Vanessa was release the end of May and back home on Camano Island w/ the family. At this point she will live with us - we've converted one bay of the garage into a cool apartment for her, one of our friends donated a handicap shower for her. She receives Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy and nursing twice a week.
We've got caregivers lined up but she's resistant to being "babysat"....."I'M the BABYSITTER...I don't need a babysitter" she says! She's handling the changes as well as can be expected and we're all adjusting to the new change....Hey - we're supposed to have an empty nest...and ours is filling back up!
Update - Vanessa is now living at home, she is unable to go back to school at this point due to the extent of her brain injury. However, she has her memory, she's able to dress and feed herself, go to the gym and work out or do water aerobics, take a pilates class, and live a full life....She gets frustrated since this is not the life we predicted, but we are so thankful she is alive. The doctors have decided not to proceed with the artery transfer brain surgery since her back arteries have opened up enough to give her brain adequate blood flow. Her 2 carotid arteries have completely closed up, but there is less risk of stroke now since they have shut down.
We are thankful for all her progress!
Ref # vgirl
|
|---|
$-
Quantity:
|
