It was at 5:00AM, my 18 year-old daughter, Gabriella, just got finished with her early morning workout before school (her senior year) on April 24th, 2017. She started complaining of her head really hurting and started crying because of the pain. She then stumble in the kitchen and started throwing up several times. We called 911 and were waiting as she continued to throw up – then she became unresponsive.
The ambulance finally came and took her to St. Elizabeth’s in Boardman, Ohio. They rushed her in and did a CT scan of her brain and saw a brain bleed thinking it was an aneurysm. They could not do anything at that hospital so they rushed here to Mercy Health downtown. They stabilized her and proceeded to do a CT scan then an angiogram to try to find out where exactly where the bleed was coming from. They tried to coil it, but was unsuccessful. At 3:00 in the afternoon they took her into surgery for 4 hours.
The doctor finally came out and told us it was a huge AVM in the right temporal lobe. Post-surgery it caused her left side to become weaker and she was unable to move her left arm. It was very hard when the doctor was explaining what an AVM was, but luckily we came across the Joe Niekro Foundation online support group.
We had so many people, churches, communities praying for her. People we didn’t even know sending were sending us cards, money, food. I never realized how many people actually cared for us until this tragedy struck our family. It was amazing – the power of prayer was what got her through it.
She was in ICU for 2 weeks and then proceeded to rehab for a week. She didn’t have to do outpatient rehab because of how well she was doing. It has been almost 4 months since the AVM rupture. She has struggled with a lot of this, along with her headaches in the first 3 months.
She like everyone else in the JNF online community, she wants her life back. However, she has a lot of faith in God, so there are the good days and the bad. We are so forever grateful to all the people who have helped us get through this and all the prayers! She has a long way to go, but God is good!
The Joe Niekro Foundation would like to thank Christine Hryb for sharing her daughter’s story and we would like to thank them for being a part of the JNF community. We wish Gabriella continued health during recovery!
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