Phil’s Story

Site created on May 19, 2020

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.


Last Saturday morning (the 16th) mom and dad were at their trailer in Holcombe when dad mentioned he had a bad headache all of sudden.  About a half hour later, one of the neighboring campers found him lying on the ground unconscious.  Luckily there are several nurses in the campground and they started CPR and called 911.  He came to briefly before the helicopter took him to Eau Claire and he was able to answer some questions, talk to mom and chew some baby aspirin, but either on the way, or at Mayo in Eau Claire, he had another episode and the doctors sedated him to prevent further issues.  They found that he had a subarachnoid hemmorage (an aneurysm) in the lining between his skull and brain.  They immediately decided to fly him to Rochester.   Once there, they did an angiogram to find the bleed and performed a procedure called an Endovascular Embolization where they go through an artery in the groin and place platinum coils into the aneurysm to slow the bleed causing it to clot and stop.  The procedure was successful, but the aneurysm was pretty bad so they needed to put a shunt in to drain the fluid and lower the pressure.  When they did this, he had a subdermal hematoma (secondary bleed), but the doctors do not seem too concerned with this.  

He is in stable condition, but the doctors have said this was a very serious episode and he's got a long way to go.  

Newest Update

Journal entry by Cindy Bowe

Flip has been a little more confused that past few days.  He has been talking about going to school and asking where to catch the bus. Tonight he had to go to Hudson because his office was there and he had a meeting. I never know what is going to come out of him. He had therapy today and did well while there but then when he gets home he starts in with the driving somewhere in the car and other things that make no sense. We are going to try doing therapy twice a week to see if that makes a difference. This could be a result of the shunt adjustment last week also. It's just strange that he can be so good that you would never know anything happened and the next minute he can't remember anything. He has been saying that he wants to go home but home is a different place each time, tonight it was in Hudson and other times it's someone's house. When I tell him he is home and that we have lived here for 30 years he just looks confused. I still have trouble getting him do his therapy that he is supposed to do, sometimes I think he feels that it is making him feel like, why am I having to do these silly exercises I am smarter then this. You can see him thinking and trying to come up with the correct words but he just can't do it. Hopefully this will pass and we will move on to the next stage of recovery. Have a wonderful weekend everone.

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