#Stroke

Hi, my name is Maddi. In this journal I share my journey with stroke rehabilitation, in the hopes that by sharing my experience I can empower and inspire others to find ways to repurpose or find meaning even in the face of hardship.
On May 30, 2017 I checked into New York Presbyterian Hospital for brain surgery. Since childhood, I was plagued with terrible migraines, culminating in a series of migraines lasting over 20 days when I was in high school. My neurologist decided to order an MRI, which confirmed our suspicions that there was something else going on. It was discovered that I had a rare arteriovenous malformation (AVM for short), in the right occipital lobe of my brain. I made the decision to have brain surgery once I graduated college to remove the risk of a potential rupture. I was informed that with each year of life there is an increased chance of the AVM bleeding and causing a stroke or even death. I wasn’t a huge fan of the idea of brain surgery, but I was even less a fan of dying from an AVM bleed, so I decided to go in for brain surgery and have it removed. The doctors told me that if everything went well, I would rest and recover for a month or two and be in perfect condition to move up to Boston and start my job at the end of the summer.
Well, let’s just say that didn’t happen as planned. One of the pre-operative procedures caused a blood clot in my brain which burst, causing a massive brain hemorrhage and an emergency surgery. On his way into surgery, the neurosurgeon told my parents that “the situation was grim. It doesn’t look good,” and then he rushed off to the OR.
7 hours and 6 liters of blood transfusions later, I lay completely paralyzed on the left side of my body in a hospital bed in the New York Presbyterian ICU. Upon waking up from a coma a few hours later, I had no idea what had happened and it was unclear what recovery from this might look like.