Arianne's sister in law, Amy, kept everyone up to speed via Facebook posts. Here's a quick rundown of the first few updates:
1: She had a brain bleed that was repaired yesterday (coil placed via angiogram). She remains in ICU. She is sedated but She squeezed the nurse's hand today on command and when asked if Her name was "smith" she shook her head no.
2: Still feeling optimistic but as the doctor said today she is still very sick... They are closely watching her heart and lungs as they have some fluid on them. This is still a very long road. She smiled though when we arrived today and opened her eyes, she was responding to the nurse's questions. She has the tube in assisting her breathing, but she was making her "fish lip" face for us and giving the thumbs up! She was trying to talk but can't because of the tube which I am sure is very frustrating especially for Ari.
3: No major changes really, we got some great education by the nurses today. She is still a "sick chic" basically the vessels in the brain can spasm from the blood that was on the brain, these spasms can lead to further neurological damage. They are doing everything possible to prevent this obviously but it is still a risk.. The heart seems to be getting a little better, but they are still watching that too. They let up on her sedation and I asked to see her pretty green eyes, she opened them for me. I told her she's gone viral on Facebook and that all of you are praying for her, she gave me a little smile. She's quite uncomfortable when they pause the sedation so they turned it back on.
4: (From May 24) Today at 3 pm I got a call that they detected that Ari was having Cerebral Vasospasms (spasms of the arteries in the brain) this is the complication they were watching out for, so tonight she had another angiogram to see the severity of the spasm. When I spoke to the nurse he said it was a slight spasm and they placed her on a couple of new meds to help with the spasms. Otherwise her vital signs were good. As of now they were not able to check her neuro status because she just got out of surgery.
5: (May 25) She got her breathing tube out.. She is awake and talking! Still on heavy meds, and gets confused but she knows who we all are! She still has many tubes and wires and is quite uncomfortable, so we are trying to make her rest. We are all so excited to see her awake but we are trying not to overload her.
6: (May 27) We had a good visit with Arianne today, I managed to detangle the crazy bird nest lady hair and get her some cute braids. She was sitting up in a chair contraption today. She no longer has the breathing tube nor the feeding tube nor the chest tube. She is still having vaso-spasms which they are giving her meds for. She is on pain meds but it is hard to tell whether it is that or brain issues that make her "goofy" sometimes. Her night nurse said the pressure in the head is up tonight and she is more sleepy, so pray for the pressure to go down.
For more information on what's happening with Ari's body, I've linked to reputable sources on the different conditions. At the outset of this whole ordeal, the doctors said she'd be in ICU for 1-2 weeks at least, so we are still kind of in the predictable pathway. We simply don't know yet what to expect in the future, we're in "wait and see" mode. We don't have a real prognosis yet. We don't know if there is any neurological deficiency-- we don't know if her brain is damaged.
--Posted by Kasey
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