Saturday, August 18, 2012

An Update...

Many of you have text me to send prayers and thoughts for my brother, Garrett. Thank you so much for that. It was greatly appreciated

For those of you that haven't heard, my brother and his best friend were in a four wheeler accident on Tuesday evening. They were both rushed to the hospital in Batavia and then later in the night, Garrett was taken to Buffalo Children's Hospital. Thankfully, his friend escaped the accident with some pretty bad scrapes, but was able to return home in the morning. After a lot of poking and proding and a catscan, they realized Garrett had a bloodclot in his brain. And a follow-up catscan a few hours later revealed that the bloodclot was growing and would need to be removed. So at 10:00 on Wednesday morning, Garrett was rushed to surgery to remove a piece of his skull, extract the bloodclot, lift up a flap of his brain to check for bleeding, and then put it all back together again. Every piece of that proceduce sounds deathly scary to me and as you can probably imagine, those two hours he spent in surgery were a few of the toughest hours of my life.

Thankfully, everything went well. He made a speedy recovery from surgery and was able to leave ICU a day early and then leave the hospital two days before expected. He seems completely alert and basically his regular self (although his head is all wrapped up). I breathed a sigh of relief when I introduced myself to the nurse after surgery and her comment was, Oh, are you the sister with a daughter that his is the godfather of? He's been talking about her all morning. How old is she - one year and eight months?

The incisions on his head will remain wrapped until the middle of next week and then he will continue to follow up with a neurosurgeon for some time after that. Thank you for your continued support, even just a simple text means more than you could ever imagine.

7 comments:

  1. So glad he's recovering well. Keeping him and your whole family in our prayers.
    Love,
    The Hartways

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  2. Oh my word, Jenna! So sorry to hear that!
    The whole Bannister family is definitely keeping Garrett in our prayers.

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  3. I talked to your mom yesterday while I was on the road, at the same time Jesse was reading your post... so I came home and I said, Jesse... wait until I tell you about Garrett!! And he replys, oh that he had brain surgery? I was mad for a moment, I thought he knew for longer than 15 minutes and had forgotten to tell me. I told your mom to tell Garrett... "Welcome to the Club, the Brain Surgery Club." lol Will continue to say our prayers, if you or your mom need anything, ASK!! Love ya! Jennifer

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  4. Praying for his continued recovery...

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  5. So sorry to hear about the accident, but I am glad that he is home and ok!

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  6. Thank you for all the sweet comments!

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  7. as you might be able to guess, I am catching up tonight, I am so sorry to hear this, and sounds like he is on the road to a speedy recovery. you have a great family support, I am sure he is being well taken care of.

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