Amy's Posts

Hello everyone. Thank you for all of your comments and guestbook messages. I am just back from my trip to Cleveland Clinic. I can't tell you how many emotions hit me the moment I walked into that building for the first time since surgery. It was like a flush of emotions came over me and memories of the first steps into that building on surgery day hit me and how scared I was and everything I went through and where I'm at now just overflowed inside of me. I was caught off guard by the powerful feelings from that. As far as the testing went, I met with the cardiologist, had numerous blood work tests, and also met with the neurologist. So far all of my tests came back normal and they still cannot determine where a blood clot stemmed from, but they did determine that the stroke was caused by a clot and not the areas in my brain that are now there post surgery. They also cannot determine what caused those brain bleeds. There are numerous scenarios they say could have caused them including being on the bypass machine during surgery… But they said they don't have enough studies on post surgery MRIs to make any conclusions. They did keep reinforcing that the risk of clot is much higher than any risks in my brain right now with the bleeding and I should stay on my aspirin regiment until further notice. So unfortunately I don't have any answers still and no clue how those things got in my brain.... but if everyone is telling me I need to be on aspirin then I am staying on it and hoping for the best. While I was there my father went into the hospital for a heart cath and it was determined he needs to have triple bypass surgery… So I'm a little bummed that he's going to have to go through an open heart surgery. It's a completely different issue than what I had but its still open heart surgery. His date is next week so I will be heading back next weekend to be with him for a few days. He's not having it at the Cleveland clinic though. As always, we keep moving forward and living life one day at a time. Since my surgery I have adopted a dog so now I have some company and life is so much better each day! :-) My workouts are nothing like they used to be, but heck my body has been through a lot and now since the stroke I have days where I am full of energy and then the next day completely exhausted, so I am still working through the stroke recovery process. Im so thankful I have recovered from that and just pray it doesn't happen again.