On Thursday, May 11th Keith went to St. John’s with symptoms similar to a stroke such as numbness in right leg and arm. At the initial exam, doctors thought he had a stroke. After further testing, a MRI showed a brain aneurysm. They transported him to the U of MN- East Bank hospital for further testing and surgery. Initially we thought the surgery would be taking place on the 12th to take precautions of the aneurysm bursting. The swelling on the brain stem had become worse and he began seeing double vision in his right eye. The doctors wanted to do an angiogram to get better pictures of what they were working with. After further tests, they found he has a large aneurysm on his brain stem. There were two different methods the surgeon was initially thinking about doing. The first: Coiling (Going up through the artery in the leg into the brain and placing coils around the brain aneurysm and inserting stints to hold the coils in place. The second is: Clipping (Cutting open the back/side of the skull and going around the brain stem and arteries to obtain control of blood flow and ultimately clip the aneurysm). The surgeon was leaning towards coiling because it carries less risk during the surgery. During the night on Friday, Keith had to be intubated because he was having a hard time swallowing. They kept him pretty sedated that whole weekend because he became very agitated. They had his left arm restrained so that he couldn’t try to pull the tubes out and he did not like the tube down his throat. On Monday, they decided they wanted to place a trach in and this would make him much more comfortable. A week after being in the hospital, the surgeon had come up with his decision on which surgery he would like to proceed with. The doctor recommended doing the Clipping method. Even though this is a riskier surgery, the outcome is brighter. Part of the surgery may involve a method that cools the brain for a certain amount of time. . This method is called Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. It cools the brain to around 68 degrees Fahrenheit and puts him on bypass to function his heart and lungs. They would only have roughly 20- 40 mins to use this process. The risk during surgery doubles if this method has to be used. This is also just a possibility, they may not even need to do that but they want to be as prepared as possible. The doctor said this would roughly be a minimum of 1 year recovery time. The surgery will taking place on May 31. Please continue to pray for Keith, his family, Dr. Tummala & his team of surgeons.
Fortunately Keith has medical insurance, but of course we have no idea the coverage and such.
As you can imagine the financial burden will inevitably weigh on Keith. He only has 12 weeks of short term disability coming to him. We want to help him financially as much as possible. Just to give him some peace so he can heal his mind and body.
https://www.youcaring.com/keithrichardson-831403 
