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Care Partner of the Month Care Partnering is an awesome responsibility -- especially if the Survivor you're caring for is your twin. We applaud Chrissie Brantley's tremendous emotional strength and fortitude during this major transition of her life. Chrissie says: "On March 30, 1999 my twin sister, Debbie, had a hemorrhagic stroke and the course of both of our lives was forever changed. Overnight I went from being a free spirited restauranteaur to full time care partner. I was ill prepared for this reality but have since discovered a well of strength and patience in me that I never knew existed. My sister ended up in a hospital in Montgomery, Alabama and this is where we encountered the first in an endless line of serendipitous encounters that would help us through what has proved to be an incredibly challenging time. By the time Debbie made it to the operating room she had been bleeding into her brain for close to 48 hours and was in a coma. It was only after they shaved her head and opened her skull that it was discovered that she had suffered a cerebellar stroke due to the rupture of a malformed cluster of blood vessels located in her cerebellum (AVM). At first glance her surgeon, Dr. Donovan Kendrick, thought to proceed would be anything but a blessing to our family and in fact was preparing to "close her up" when something moved him to proceed. He cleaned out the part of her brain that was now necrotic (dead) and did whatever else was necessary to clean up the ruptured AVM and then closed her up. At this point family members and friends had gathered in the small
surgical waiting room to sit, to pray, to wait. It was clear to
me as I saw Dr. Kendrick's face that whatever news he came bearing
was far from good. Seeing that he was struggling for words I touched
his arm and asked, "What are you trying to say?" He replied,
"Your sister will not live through the night." He explained
to us that people who have these kinds of injuries to the brain
do not live and if she were to live, based on what he saw, she would
be so diminished in capacity as to be nothing more than vegetative. Debbie had in fact suffered three assaults to her brain as a result
of her stroke.
The first caused by the rupture
of the AVM (the bleed), the second being frontal anoxia (she was
resuscitated by our mother before being taken by ambulance to the
ER), and lastly profound hydrocephalus as a result of the other
injuries to her brain. Any one of these injuries alone is enough
to cause life altering damage but the three together certainly meant
her death.
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