for those of you who have not yet heard... (the main pic of this tribe is killa)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
from brokenbear:

I am very sad to have to start the New Year off with some not so
good news. Donna/Killa is in San Francisco General right now in intensive
care.

Not to get into too much detail, but to let you know what happened, was that
we were out partying & dancing in the New Year when she started to not feel
well. She was complaining of a terrible headache and I took her outside
onto a rooftop for fresh air. Hilary and I did what we could, but things
did not look good and there was no improvement...so, Hilary & Simon took her
to the hospital.

The initial report we had was that they'd done a cat scan and she
had suffered from a twisted artery that ruptured. A small aneurysm, but
enough to do unfortunately require life support/ventilation. The follow-up
today is that her condition remains the same. She is in a comatose state
and is stabilized. This is a wait and see process. They have more tests to
run, but are monitoring her closely. Brain surgery is not recommended at
this time. The extent of the injury is not known yet either.

So, if you could all put your collective prayers, juju, etc. together that
would be great. If you're in SF and want to stop by, she's on the 4th floor
in intensive care.

Once again, sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but I am optimistic
that Killa will pull through all of this with all of the fighter inside of
her.

Anything I hear, I'll let you know. Her family is going out there to be
with her.
~k

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
forwarded conversation between sputnik + neuron (a neurologist friend):

Tigger and I went to visit Killa yesterday, here' s the info I gleaned
and passed on to Neuron with his responses, my email has arrows next
to it, his responses do not, this sounds grim in the beginning, but
read the whole email:

SputnikII wrote:

> She was conscious when she arrived at the hospital, but signs of
> consciousness were rapidly deteriorating. A CT scan was 'one of the
> worst I'd seen' according to one of the nurses, and showed bleeding
> into all four ventricles.


That is grim - it means that a huge amount of blood punctured the brain
enough to get into the ventricles. Blood in the ventricles itself is
usually a bad sign.


> She was 'decerebrate posturing' early on,


This means that no signals from the cerebral hemispheres are getting to
the more primitive parts of the brain. A bad sign.

> but within 24 hours was responding to pain stimulus with 'complex
> flexion', and did 'localize' when a needle was inserted into her left
> arm.


This is a massive improvement, given that she was decerebrate 24 hours
before. The ability to localize a painful stimulus requires a cerebral
cortex.

> He pupils are responsive to light, but barely. She is
> occasionally making shrugging motions. There is still blood in her
> cerebral spinal fluid, but they are hoping that the bleed with heal,
> otherwise surgery may be necessary.


There are two different possible surgeries. The first is to fix the
aneurysm. The surgeons obviously decided that, because she was still in
a coma, it was not worth doing that. If she does recover, that will
always be a possibility, and I, for one would ultimately recommend it.
The second has to do with a late problem with blood in and around the
brain. The blood clogs the absorbtion pathway for cerebrospinal fluid,
which is made inside the lateral ventricles, percolates out through the
fourth ventrical, and is ultimately absorbed through specially organs
called arachnoid villi which live at the very top of the skull. Blood
clogs the pathway, and you can develop hydrocephalus. If that happens
she will an operation to shunt the cerebrospinal fluid elsewhere,
usually into the peritoneum.

> Sometimes she has a
> hypersensitive response to touch causing her whole body to become
> rigid and her bp to spike. She is currently on a respirator, but at
> times is 'overbreathing' the respirator, and one of the main reasons
> to keep it was to avoid he occluding her own airway as the muscles of
> her neck would not be able to keep it clear. At the present time she
> has still not regained consciousness.


All of those things are good. They should keep her on the respirator for
a while. Not a problem.

>
> That's all the information I could glean, hope that paints a clearer
> picture for you. Any thoughts would be appreciated. The nurse said
> she had a good feeling in her gut about killa, and told us that the
> neurologist had said the same thing to her (I'm sure she wasn't
> supposed to share this, but she is extremely sweet). The overall
> message seemed to be that we just wont know anything for a while.
>

Given the story, I have a good feeling also.