Our good friend, Russ Parish, suffered a Hemmorhaigic stroke (brain aneurysm) on Good Friday, April 2, 2010.
He had a mini stroke while at work on Friday and was taken to Hillcrest hospital in Mayfield Heights. On Saturday, he started getting terrific headaches, signs of another mini stroke. About 9pm on April 3rd, he was life flighted to the Cleveland Clinic. En route, he suffered a massive stroke.
He had emergency surgery where a hole was drilled in his skull to relieve pressure. He was also placed on a ventilator for breathing. On Easter Sunday, surgeons perfomed a brain angioplasty and they repaired the broken blood vessels.
Russ recovered the next day and was able to talk a little. His left side suffered the most damage, and he was making good progress for the next few days. But as is common in these cases, he began suffering from vasospasms, where the blood vessles in the brain contract. Surgeons performed more angioplasitys to keep them open. They indicated these would occur for the next 2 weeks or so. No one is sure how much damage has occurred until the spasms stop.
To make things more complicated, Russ also has an infection on his heart valve. This has damaged the valve and could possibly have been a contributing factor to the stroke. So the heart doctors don't want his heart to beat too hard to preserve the damaged valve, while his brain doctors want as much blood as possible pumped into his brain. It is a contradiction.
Russ has had 8 brain angioplasty operations. If one of these is major surgery, what would 8 be?
On April 26, Russ suffered another stroke. The medical staff was right on it, and they did another angioplasty to stop the bleeding. He has not yet shown the improvements like he did the first time. They also decided to put in a feeding tube.
On May 11, Russ started bleeding from problems with the feeding tube. He had more surgery to repair the problem and remove some of the excess blood. All we can think is "What else can go wrong?" The surgery went well, but he is spends most of the time sleeping. This is probably the best for him now.
Since then, Russ has had both a shunt and stent installed in his head. The shunt drains excess fluid from his head into his body. The stent is a sleeve that keeps the bad blood vessel in his head from having another anurism. He also had a tracheotomy.
Russ has now been moved to Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital in Warren Ohio. He works hard most of the day on rehab and is usually asleep in the early evening. He is making progress, but it is slower than we like.