Dear friends and family,
Today I have two very excellent pieces of news to share! First, today is Rion's Birthday—HOORAY! And second, I am very excited to report that as she begins another journey around the sun she will be doing so with an enormous weight off her shoulders. Earlier this summer, Rion underwent a surgery to coil the active aneurysm is her brain, and we are so happy to share that it was a success! After taking a few months to process, and make sure things continued smoothly, now seemed like a good time to let you all know the news.
I'll let Rion take over from here! Below is an update from her:
"Hi!
Here's a little recap since surgery!
It's been 3 months since I had surgery on my brain aneurysm! 3 months! It's crazy. So many emotions fly through my head but to sum it up, I feel great! Which is a wild thing to think that I am after those rough first two months of this whole story! I've actually felt pretty great since my return back to Nashville from New York City the first week of December. It's a weird sensation feeling so great but knowing there was something so dangerous inside my brain. So having this surgery at the end of May was such a relief.
I think I kind of jumped into having this surgery after so much apprehension after having two procedures. First an angiogram, or a scan that showed how the blood flowed, in March which showed that the artery that the aneurysm was on had basically cut itself off from the rest of the brain! Which was great news! Then a month later I had a CT scan that essentially showed the opposite of the angiogram, that my aneurysm had grown and there seemed to be blood flowing through the artery that was supposed to be cut off. The scary part was that if blood was flowing, the higher the chance of strokes occurring with more permanent damage. That made the decision to go in and get the beast, coil the aneurysm, all the more definitive yet nerve-wracking with the sense of the unknown happening. Coiling meant they went in through my groin via a catheter and inserted spring-shaped soft metal coils into the aneurysm, which induce clotting and no more blood can pass through the aneurysm. So there is now no longer a chance of the aneurysm bleeding out again. My surgery was a success!
I can't thank my neurosurgeon and his team enough. They really worked hard to figure out the best way possible to get rid of this aneurysm when at first because of placement and how large the aneurysm was, coiling wasn't the best option. When I was in recovery, a doctor from my neurosurgeon's team came in to check on me and said in a very dark way, "Can you believe it?" and I immediately was like wait whatt?! Believe what? What happened? Am I ok? I was starting to freak out! He was like, "Can you believe it, you're here! That you made it, that your artery was so unexpected, special and scary but that you're alive." I nervously laughed with him but that knowledge that holy cow, I am alive is really quite unreal and amazing.
I've gotten back to "normal" life. Back to work, taking my little mental health walks along the greenway and trying to go out and see friends. I have noticed some cracks in the varnish of my brain are much larger now, which is hard to deal with, but I'm trying to keep a positive mindset in dealing with those bumps in the road. If those are the smallest things to deal with, I will be glad to deal with them then to ever have a brain aneurysm again! Thank you all one million times over for all of your time, concern, donation, care and love.
Love, Rion"
After the tumult and disruption of the past year, I am so in awe of my sister. How she navigated this extremely scary situation, and made the difficult decision to go ahead with this procedure (which was not without a great deal of risk) was so brave. At times, of course, it was a dark and frightening place for her to be, but she made it through these past 9 months calmly, with such positivity and humor, and we are just so grateful that she is here and we can celebrate her!
I will be continuing with our fundraising effort, as the great downside of this whole ordeal (really the salt in the wound) is the very large amount of medical debt that Rion is now being expected to pay. In addition to fundraising, we are also looking in to medical advocacy and debt forgiveness to help alleviate the many thousands of dollars that she has been saddled with and that her insurance will not cover. If anyone has any advice or knows of good resources to check out, please let us know!
Please join me in wishing Rion the happiest of birthdays, and we hope you are all enjoying these last days of Summer!
With love,
Maeve, Mary, and Rion
