Les
You might be considered lucky to survive a catastrophic illness once. I've done it six times! And now I'm helping others by proving that faith, strength, perseverance, and a strong will, can bring miracles.By all appearances Sharon and I are the typical husband and wife. We met the summer after Sharon graduated high school and was working in her father's pharmacy. We got married in 1969 when I was 21 and Sharon was 19. In 2009 we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. In that time, our marriage has been tried and tested more than either of us could've imagined.In 1990 while our family was living abroad, something happened to me that would change our lives forever. I woke up in the middle of the night and I was extremely nauseous and had a terrible pounding headache. The room was spinning, and I had severe vertigo. I literally had to crawl from the bed to the bathroom because I wasn't able to walk.I had no idea what was wrong, and even after several doctors visited me at home my symptoms persisted. The pain continued for a long time, and all the disability continued for a long time as well.I remember that I could find little comfort for the pain in my head. But I discovered that when I laid on my right side the pain would diminish. I literally laid on the right side of my head for days on end, kind of recognizing and listening to my body, realizing that made me feel better.After 18 months, and having mostly recovered from the strange illness, similar symptoms began hitting me again. This time, though, I learned the truth about what was happening to me.The same day as the MRI, I got this panicked call from the hospital saying 'Get back right now!'. Doctors discovered I had suffered a major hemorrhage on the right side of my brain more than a year before, and that it was happening again.The MRI results were frightening. I looked at the films and there was literally splattered blood all over the right side of my brain.When I asked doctors about the relief I had felt when I laid on my right side they told me that by listening to my body, I most likely saved my own life. It turns out that that [laying on the right] put the necessary pressure on the bleed, which was fortunately near the surface of the brain and it stopped the bleeding.After the bleeds were discovered, I was forced to undergo brain surgery almost immediately. "He was only 44-years-old when he had his first surgery, so it was pretty scary," says his wife, Sharon.Explaining the situation to my children was even scarier. We went home and told the kids and I broke down crying. I was going to try to be strong, but I just couldn't.It took even more time before I got an official medical diagnosis. While doctors knew my brain was bleeding, they didn't know why until several months later, that's when the same thing happened to my mother. After her episode, the Mayo Clinic conducted a genetic background on the family. I was aware that there had been some brain issues in the family. A couple uncles died, some cousins, but none of us really knew what it was.The results from the DNA background found that both my mother and I suffered from a condition called cavernous angioma. Dr. Jonathan White, a neurosurgeon at UT Southwestern in Dallas, says a cavernous angioma occurs when blood vessels form as clusters, instead of normal tube-like structures. The condition can happen anywhere in the body, but primarily occurs in the brain or spine. Sometimes the blood vessels burst, leading to bleeding in the affected area. The condition is usually genetic.My son, Mike, was also diagnosed with cavernous angioma and seven years ago, my wife and I got a distressed call from him. He called us and told us he thought he was having a hemorrhage, and of course we told him to get to the doctor immediately.Mike was in fact suffering a hemorrhage, one he would later undergo surgery for. I felt a little bit of guilt, you know, knowing that I passed the condition on to him. When I went to visit him in the hospital, the first time after the hemorrhage, he looked really bad, and I remember he said to me, 'Dad this isn't your fault'."Over the last 20 years, I have been through five major brain hemorrhages and I have endured two grueling brain surgeries. Like most patients with debilitating conditions, I often times asked why. "I thought to myself, what did I do, to deserve five bleeds and two surgeries."My worst hemorrhage, and most severe, happened two years ago. The episode was followed by my second brain surgery. When I look at a photo of himself, taken four months after the last hemorrhage, I would say that it's a real miracle that I've recovered to the extent that I have.Now I am telling his story in a new book called 'Brain Storms: Surviving Catastrophic Illness'. In it, I explain how I've been able to overcome so much adversity and turn it into hope. I never allowed myself to believe that I wouldn't get better. I prayed every day that I would get better. In fact, some days it was all I could do.I began writing the book while recovering from my Christmas Day 2005 hemorrhage and subsequent surgery, so it deals with every up-and-down with my recovery, as it happened. If he could re-title the book, it'd be called '27 Things to Do When You Get Really Sick'. It's 27 things that you can do to survive and recover a serious illness regardless of what the serious illness might be.The thought of helping others drove me to get better during the early days of my recovery. If I can pass that along to other people and also if they can see me a walking talking functioning human being after all that I've been through, it just helps me to know that I've helped them.I have other cavernous angioma in my brain, that could begin to bleed at any moment, but exactly how many is unknown...at least to me. Only my neurosurgeon knows. I don't want to know, I just want to concentrate on living my life. It's counterproductive to worry about what might or might not happen the next day, so I just continue to live my life to the fullest.