Everyone, thank you very much for your help and support for Tina. We all recognize her as a wonderful, smart, and caring person who has given very much to the people she has been serving. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers as we being this journey.
What happened
Tina has had a very grave accident - she fell off of a golf cart on Monday, Sept 7 2015. She was meeting the family of her new boyfriend and they went for a ride around the development after dinner. She was brought to Bayonet Point Trauma center.
That evening she had 2 surgeries on her head. The first was considered relatively minor injury of the left side of her brain. However, because of the massive internal bleeding and swelling it quickly became a fight for her life.
The second surgery that night []consisted of a "craniotomy" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniotomy) . To stop the bleeding and brain swelling the doctor had to remove a portion of her left frontal lobe as well as address several other areas that were bleeding profusely. Her brain swelled to a pressure of 80, which the doctor said by all rights she should not have survived.
However she lived through the night. Early Tuesday morning she moved her right hand and leg, and so the doctor ordered another CAT scan, and Wednesday morning went in and operated a third time to remove the damaged/dead tissue and reposition the pressure sensors in her brain.
Tina is still considered in a "coma" - her initial "Glasgow Coma Scale" (GCS -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Coma_Scale ) was a "3" (the lowest) on Monday night. Today, she is considered to be a "7" or "8" - with the Doctors telling us "3-8" is generally considered a coma.
Her current condition (9/12/2015)
About 20% of her frontal left lobe was lost/removed, as well as a portion of her temporal lobe. Her vital signs look in acceptable ranges and she is moving her left arm and leg both spontaneously. Her right side is still very little movement but is responding to pain. It is still to early to tell if she is going to survive, however she has beaten the odds so far - The next 1-2 weeks will be telling. Her current cranial pressure is in the 20-23 range today, a bit high, but is without sedation or pain medication. If it goes higher the surgeon will add sedation.
Finally if we survive the next 2-3 weeks he will have her moved to a long term care facility who can better help with the care. If all goes well with that he expects to be able to re-attach her skull in 3-4 months.
Long term we can expect to have speech and cognitive rehabilitation as well as physical training to overcome the right side weakness.
I will post updates here as they come in, please check back here for her status.
We really do appreciate all the prayers and support for her - she would not have made it this far without them! Thank you!
