Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in and in one place. Below is the story of how we got here:
Through teary eyes and shaky hands I write this post about our mom. Yesterday morning (Monday 5/22) she woke up and her leg was numb/tingling. At some point she attempted to get out bed and fell. She then somehow crawled into the garage, where she called Gene using the Alexa. Gene rushed home and found her sitting against the refrigerator in the garage drinking a water. He offered to call a squad but she declined. Gene then helped her into the car and drove her to the emergency room. Once there, they did a CT scan revealing something "abnormal", which prompted the ER staff to order an MRI. If you know Kelly, she is as claustrophobic as they come. She told them they would need to sedate her heavily to do the MRI. When the ER staff gave her Ativan, it had the opposite effect. She became extremely agitated and combative. After a couple hours of being there, the ER Doc said this is becoming more serious and ordered a sedated MRI. To do this, they had to intubate her and do it under general anesthesia. The MRI showed that there was some sort of bleeding going on but not from a vessel. Doctors didn't have a straight answer as to where it had originated from. Later in the evening, a repeat CT scan showed that the original bleed or "spot" had gotten larger. The neurologist wanted to wait until the morning to do a third CT scan to compare. Slowly, mom's condition began to worsen. Erin and I drove to Des Moines last night, but due to restricted visiting hours, we were unable to see her until we snuck in before hours this morning. The ICU nurse said she was combative and restless all night. Upon our arrival in the morning, her right side had lost almost all function. She was confused, and was not able to talk. The neurologist called us in at about 6:45 to tell us that he was worried and moved his cases around so he could do surgery right away. Mom went to surgery at about 7:15. We had high hopes that it was possibly just a brain bleed or benign tumor that could be repaired and she would be back to normal quickly. Unfortunately we got news that nobody is prepared to receive. The bleeding was coming from a large cancerous tumor that the doctor called a glioblastoma, which is a fast growing and aggressive brain tumor. The doctor was afraid to put a timeline on where we're at, but he did say that the CT scan tomorrow (Wednesday) will be very telling to see if the bleeding has stopped and if they'll be able to do any sort of target radiation to slow the spread. We finally got to see her after the surgery around noon. She recognized all of us and was not shy about the fact that her mouth was super dry and she was very thirsty. She is sedated and tired, but we are happy that we could see her and talk to her. I'll update with any further happenings. Please continue to pray for our beautiful momma.
We just got back from a few days in the mountains and it was lovely! Mom’s friends Amber and Lindsay flew in from Des Moines, Julie and Michele flew in from Omaha and Grandma surprised Mom and came too!
We were hoping to see some moose and unfortunately we didn’t see any, but we did have an amazing time. Mom felt great (the best part of the whole trip!) We all enjoyed the sunsets, the hot tub at the Airbnb, playing games, eat lots of yummy food, water coloring, laughing so hard, and taking tons of pictures.
It was wonderful to get away, relax, and spend time together making memories 🌅
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