Brain stroke at 25. Please help with experience
Hi everyone, I don’t even know where to start. A friend of mine who is only 25 had a brain stroke five days ago. He was absolutely healthy before from what we know and is an international PhD student in the United States and has no family here. He was taken to Jamaica emergency room And had craniotomy on the day of the event. They said that he had three times the norm of the intracranial pressure that they were able to relieve. His brain was swollen, and the back of the skull was taken out for it to hang out instead of pressing inwards. They said that the damage was done to brain stem, which is very unfortunate. In the morning, they did angiogram and discovered no aneurysm. They continued with a lot of CT scans and MRI scans and found no reason for it to happen. He then had a second surgery where they were removing the blood clots and after the swelling was down, they were able to close his skull. The only suggestion so far is that maybe he has hypertension because even now under controlled medication his blood pressure is 170. After they took him off the sedatives we really hoped that he’s gonna slowly wake up and we will find out if he had any functional damage. However, it’s been three days already and he’s unable to wake up. Every time his brain tries to wake up he ends up having seizures and they put him back to sleep. Right now, I just read on his chart that on top of that he’s pee tube got infected and he developed a UTI, which is a smaller problem. I also read that he’s developing pancreatitis. He’s on ventilation and being fed through tube. I just read a lot about stroke and pancreatitis that it’s so rare and usually very bad. I’m afraid that if stroke did not do much of the harm pancreatitis might. I just wanted to find out if somebody else experienced it and how did it come out. I also wanted to ask what was the average time of waking up after stroke for you. For us it’s been five days total, three without sedatives, but with seizures so he’s back to sleep every day. I don’t understand much in this, and the doctor is very vague in his responses (which I understand). I cannot find any stable information on the Internet as well about the wake up time and what to expect. Like I said, he’s an international student and has no family here. It’s only us the friends taking care of him. His mother is devastated, and I just need to have an approximate understanding of his prognosis. Please pray for him and thank you for any info.