Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [90]
In my mind, I was thinking of how I’d need to prepare myself mentally for the long haul, of how I’d have to pay close attention to every medical decision to help Gabby recover. That would be my job. As Gabby’s mom prayed silently, I told myself: “Focus, focus, focus.”
Seeing Gabby for the first time that day was a great shock. Even when you know what to expect, nothing fully prepares you for seeing someone you love in such a critical state.
The doctors had done an emergency shave of all the hair on the left side of Gabby’s head, which was bandaged. She still had her hair on the right side. She was comatose, hooked up to a tracheotomy tube and other lines.
Her face was black-and-blue and her head was terribly swollen. It looked as if it was twice its normal size. I took it all in and then I told her how much I loved her. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I had to say it.
“You’re going to make it through this,” I told her, my voice breaking, “and we’re all going to help you.”
I took Gabby’s hand and noticed that there was caked blood under each of her fingernails. I thought about everything that she and the other victims had endured that day. I tried not to cry.
As I stood there at her bedside, a slight bloody tear fell from her left eye. I reached over and, very tenderly, wiped it away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sunrise
I made no attempt to sleep the night of the shooting. I just sat in the chair by Gabby’s bedside, holding her hand. I slept a couple of hours the second night, still in the chair.
In those first few days, Gabby’s skin was alarmingly yellow. Her eyes were closed, bruised and bulging. She had tubes in both arms, and as a precaution, doctors had her connected to a breathing tube. She was able to breathe on her own, but they hoped the ventilator would prevent windpipe infections and pneumonia. Eventually, they’d do a tracheotomy.
On the second day, doctors adjusted Gabby’s level of sedation so they could draw her out of her medically induced coma to do some testing. “Show us your fingers,” Dr. Rhee said to her, and Gabby, eyes still closed shut, was able to weakly lift two fingers on her left hand. She did it one time. “That’s a great sign,” the doctor told us. The part of her brain that processes instructions was not fully damaged, even though the bullet had traveled the full length of her left hemisphere at a thousand feet per second. Also, all things considered, she was phenomenally lucky: The bullet hadn’t sliced a major vein or artery in the brain.
Had the bullet passed through the area connecting the two hemispheres of the brain, it is unlikely Gabby would have survived. There would be too much damage. But the doctors told us that her ability to follow a command meant the centers in her brain were at least partially intact and communicating with each other, a positive sign. By keeping Gabby mostly in a medically induced coma, doctors were able to limit the electrical activity of her brain, which would help her brain tissue heal. The biggest risk: In the days ahead, tissue that surrounded the bullet’s path would be dying, exuding fluid, which would lead to more swelling. If the swelling got too bad, additional surgery would be necessary.
On some fronts, Dr. Rhee was positive almost from the start. “Your wife has a 101 percent chance of survival,” he said. “She will not die. I do not give her permission.” We knew that nine out of ten people shot in the head don’t survive. So Gabby was a success story just by virtue of still being in this world. But we all wanted more, and Dr. Rhee couldn’t say for sure that she wouldn’t end up in a semivegetative state. “It’s too soon to tell,” he said.
Those of us who love Gabby had a lot to learn about the brain, and part of what we learned was that so much is unknown. The brain has “redundant circuits” for some functions, such as walking. So it was possible that Gabby would be able to walk again. Language, which is far more complicated, could be harder to recover.
Even when doctors remove