This is way off topic, but after what happened and searching the web for personal experiences, I found little so here it is.

12 days ago, my father had a cerebral hemorrhage. Thank G-d he not only survived, but should be as good as new after a week in intensive care and a few days recuperating in a standard room.

I am not a medical expert and am only trying to recall as best as I can the important points of what happened. I will link to other more technical sites where I can.

One day at home, my father experienced a severe headache, neck stiffness and nausea. After calling his doctor, he asked my mom to come home from work and take him to the local hospital's emergency room. After various tests (MRI, CAT scan, etc.) they determined that he had had a cerebral hemorrhage and ultimately they transferred him by ambulance to a hospital that specializes in neurosurgery. The symptoms of a cerebral hemorrhage are similar to those of viral meningitis.

For the first several days, based on the "pattern" of where the blood settled in his brain, the neurosurgeon thought he had an aneurysm. Here's where I got my biggest education. I and most of the people I spoke with thought that an aneurysm was what the bleeding in the brain was called, however this is not so. An aneurysm is actually a ballooning of the blood vessels inside the brain often caused by a weakness in the walls of the blood vessels. Apparently this is a congenital problem and 5% of us are walking around with them and nothing ever happens to us.

It is when an aneurysm bursts that a cerebral hemorrhage occurs. Apparently, hemorrhages can also occur from a slight tear in a blood vessel which is what seems to have happened to my father because they never did find an aneurysm. While my dad was in ICU they continued to take daily CAT scans and MRIs, but it was the second arteriogram done on day six which was convincing enough to give the all clear inasmuch as he didn't have an aneurysm. The only way to treat an aneurysm that has bled is to perform brain surgery which obviously has it's own serious risks. Thank G-d again that we didn't have to go through that.

After the bleeding in the brain had stopped, there was still a concern that a stroke could occur. This happens when "a blood clot blocks a blood vessel or artery, or when a blood vessel breaks, interrupting blood flow to an area of the brain" which can result in brain damage or even death. The way this was prevented in my father was basically by keeping his blood pressure and heart rate steady to make sure that there was a strong flow of blood going into and out of his brain. In addition, after a "bleed", fluid tends to build up between the skull and the brain until the body can effectively begin to "recycle" the blood back into the body. If the fluid build-up begins to put too much pressure on the brain, a stent needs to be inserted in the patient's head in order to drain the fluid. The doctors made it sound as if this were a relatively common procedure in this type of case, but again my father luckily didn't need that done as the amount of fluid that he had built up was not a cause for immediate concern and eventually it disappeared naturally during the healing process.

When he finally was ready to get out of the ICU after a week, the doctors detected a mild case of pneumonia, but this could have simply been a result of his immobility and hospital stay. This was quickly resolved with some antibiotics. He also wound up getting a slight infection in his arm from all the ins and outs of all the IV needles. This is also going away after taking the appropriate antibiotics.

During his time in ICU, my dad could barely keep his eyes open, mostly because the hospital staff needed to wake him up every hour in order to monitor his speech and physical capabilities to make sure that a stroke wasn't occurring. This of course does not include meal times, pill taking, IV inserting, blood testing, sugar testing, etc. I'm sure he felt like a laboratory animal after a while! He also had a strong sensitivity to light at first which they say is normal for someone who has suffered any kind of cerebral hemorrhage - that and sensitivity to noise.

My dad came home yesterday and we are so thankful to have him home for Thanksgiving.
His one true love (aside from my mother) is reading and I hope he can begin to read again soon as it is still hard for him to concentrate on any written materials for too long.

Many thanks go to the medical staff at Zale-Lipshy Hospital who we heard were the best in the field and gave me no reason to think otherwise.

If anyone out there is reading this because they are going through a similar situation, my thoughts and prayers are with you. Although not every situation can turn out as well as ours, I believe that an optimistic outlook on the part of the patient and the family is extremely important. I did see a number of people on the "recuperation" floor of the hospital who seemed to be doing very well after having had surgery performed, so if it has to be done, the end results can still be positive. As the doctors told us in their special, non-committal way - "we always expect a full recovery after surgery". Most of the self-help books out there say that visualizing a positive end result actually helps you get there. Amen to that.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.....