Sonia's Road To Recovery

Hi all, my name is Neha, Sonia's daughter.

I don't even know where to begin with this story...

If you know my mom, you know she loves her granddaughter with every fiber of her being, she loves every client that sits in her chair to get their hair done, she helps in every way she can with anything she can, and she loves her family more than life itself.

So I guess I should start at the beginning right...?

Monday, August 14, she was so excited to "cancel her monthly subscription" as she kept referring to it. She went in for a routine hysterectomy, we got to see her a few hours later and everything seemed to be pretty normal, some abdominal pain, and pretty sleepy. But as the day progressed nothing seemed to be getting better. The pain was still unmanageable and she couldn't eat, she was so nauseous. The only time she got any sort of relief was when she was sleeping, even then, it wasn't the most comfortable. They wanted to keep her overnight to keep an eye on things. I went back over tuesday morning and the doctor came in to see how things were going, the surgery went well, as we were told. She was still in a lot of pain, she was still super nauseous and still hadn't eaten a thing. Not a single medication that they gave her to help actually helped. But regardlelss, she got discharged and I took her home.

I got her back to my house Tuesday at about 4:30 PM, and tried to make her as comfortable as possible. It was about 6 PM when she woke up in a whole lot of pain again. So, I gave her the medication that she was sent home with and she went back to sleep. After that, everything seemed to fall apart.

8 PM rolled around and I had to wake her up so she could walk around, eat something, you know, the works after surgery. It was really hard to wake her up, she was still in a lot of pain, and she started not making any sense when she responded, really loopy and delusional. That was the biggest "something's not right" moment. She hadn't been like that at all since the surgery. I kept having to wake her up every few seconds to remind her to chew what was in her mouth so she didn't choke. At that point I started making phone calls, to the surgery place, to the on call doctor, to a couple family members that are nurses, nothing was making sense and I was starting to get really scared. We decided it was best to take her to the ER and honestly I am so glad we did. When we got there her oxygen level was really low, they did some tests, took some scans, and tried to make her as comfortable as possible. They found out she was septic, has a clot in her descending aorta, and fluid in her abdomen. The ER doctors decided it would be best to life-flight her out of Rapid into Iowa City.

After they intubated her, she left early Wednesday morning and we got in our vehicles and headed the same direction. On the way down there I got a call that she was going in for emergency exploratory surgery to find out why she had fluid in her abdomen. That's when they found a perforation in her bowel. She was immediately taken to the ICU. After surgery so many more complications came to light. Her kidneys weren't functioning properly, there was still a clot in her aorta, she was on a ventilator, I mean to be real, the list just seemed to go on. She was able to be taken off the vent on Friday, but now she is in what they call "ICU delirium". Needless to say, my mom needs help. We are going to be in Iowa City at the very least until next Friday, we don't know when she will be able to go back to work, we don't know a whole heck of a lot right now. All I do know is that the financial responsibilites of life is the last thing that needs to be on her mind right now, and I am doing everything in my power to make that happen. The funds we raise here will be used to support her road to recovery. For the added comfort that she isn't alone in all of this. So that she can heal, I hope without worry. Thank you all for taking the time to read this, and if you can help please do, if you can't, just sharing my mom's story and prayer is all I ask.