Sarah Keller Medical Journey

As many of you know, on Labor Day, Monday, September 5th, my wife, Sarah started experiencing an extreme headache that became worse and worse throughout the week.

On Wednesday, she went to the Urgent Care and was given a prescription of heavy meds, but they didn’t touch it.

On Thursday, at the 72 hour mark, she went to the ER at Health Park and was diagnosed with, “Headache, no cause.”

And by Friday, she was in the worst pain I’ve ever seen her in. With that we called the office of her back surgeon (she had back surgery on August 18th) and he wanted to see her.

Believing it could be a “Spinal Fluid Leak” the surgeon gave her a “Blood Block” at noon in his office, which is a common treatment for a Spinal Leak, with the hope that the blood would clot and plug the hole.

By 2 pm Friday, she was admitted into Gulf Coast Hospital with the hope of managing her severe pain and then finding a solution to her headache.

Friday evening, a neurologist came into our room and spent about 15 minutes with us looking at MRI pictures, etc. and basically confirmed the hunch that she had a “Spinal Fluid Leak” and prescribed her to lay at an inverted angle for 24 hours, and strict bed rest with the hope that this would relieve the pressure on the hole in her spinal sack and it would heal.

However, by Saturday at 2 pm she was still not any better. So her surgeon ordered an MRI on her spine to take a closer look at the incision. When the Neurologist came in and she was showing absolutely no improvement he was pretty bleak and honestly stumped. He was fully expecting the upside down thing to work, and when it didn’t, he wasn’t real sure what to do.

The one thing he did say was that perhaps all of the heavy narcotic painkillers were causing her extreme nausea and then the anti-nausea medicine was making her head hurt, etc. causing a vicious cycle. So, before she left for the spine MRI, she was taken off all Narcotics and put on Fuerisept (sp?) which a strong migraine medicine with lots of caffeine. She was also officially prescribed as much coffee, mountain dew, and chocolate as she wanted in hopes that the caffeine would help the headache and jump start the production of spinal fluid. (Parenthetically: I’ve known Mountain Dew and Chocolate heal a lot of stuff, for a long time!!!)

So, by the time she got back from the MRI, she was feeling much better and within a couple of hours was sitting up, talking and laughing, like the old Sarah.

What an awesome turning point!!! It was truly a miraculous breakthrough!!!

So, where we have found ourselves since Saturday afternoon is that her headache is gone when she lays down, but anytime she stands up or sits up at all, the headache and pounding comes back within a few minutes which has continued to stump the surgeon.

So, Sarah is at Gulf Coast Hospital.

However, At this time we ARE NOT permitting visitors.

If you would like to send a card or note, the address is:

Gulf Coast Hospital
13681 Doctor’s Way
Fort Myers, FL 33912

Thank you for continuing to pray for her and the doctors as we continue to find a complete solution to this whole thing.

Please pray for the boys as well, they’re really starting to miss their momma at home, especially at bed time.

I will be posting updates at this website until she’s home safe and sound.

We love you all,

Matt & Sarah Keller