Life changes

Sometimes it's easy to get into the day-to-day routine of life. Then something happens that, WHAM, reminds you how fragile life is, how in an instant everything can change. That happened on Tuesday morning.

Kimberly, my 24 year old sister, had a stroke. She's still in the hospital. It turns out she has a "rare disease, and a very unusual case of it." She is diagnosed with Fibromuscular dysplasia. And she has the issue with her carotid artery, which has an aneurysm on it that has blood clots travelling to her brain. It's really, really rare. She might get discharged today, to go home and reover from the stroke, giving her brain some time to heal before surgery. The surgery is risky and controversial. Being the advocate that I am, I contacted the FMD Society of America, who have been awesome. She's had world renowned experts from Ohio review her case with her physicans at the hospital. The head honcho of FMD, Dr. Olin, is supposed to call today. I'm working on getting her seen by him in New York City, so he can assess what should be done (and maybe perform the surgery). It's all complicated by the fact that the bad part of the artery goes behind her mandible in her skull, so in order to do surgery, they'd have to dislocate her jaw completely to access the area. Scary stuff.