~Wounded Butterfly~

I had emergency brain surgery in 2008 when I was 20 yrs old and was in college to become a nurse and had a 3.4 GPA but after I had surgery, I lost my short term memory and forgot how to walk, talk, really everything and it took me years to get somewhat back to as close to normal and I was going to get…I was then diagnosed with Leukoariosis, which is a rare and serious brain disease in which stress causes white matter to start covering your brain which causes memory loss, dementia, Alzheimer’s, stroke and eventually death. I also have diabetes, neuropathy, congestive heart failure, 3rd stage kidney disease, arthritis, gout, fibromyalgia, diabetic retinopathy (meaning my retinas are hemorrhaging), my pupils are also hemorrhaging, etc. In April of 2026, I was at my camper at the lake and when I was leaving to go to my drs appointment, I fell down the steps and I couldn’t get back up…I was sitting on the hard ground and my bf tried to help me stand up and I couldn’t feel my feet. It took my hours to get back inside with scooting on my butt a little bit at the time. I was miserable and hurting even more the days and weeks after that constantly debating on needing to go to the hospital but I knew I would have to call the ambulance since I couldn’t walk anymore. So, I finally did and when I got to the hospital, they told me when I fell I fractured my hip, broke 2 ribs, and I had a Pontine Aschemic Stroke (which means: there was a blood clot in my brain stem that had stopped my blood flow from getting to my vital organs to function correctly). I also had a pulmonary embolism (which is a blood clot in the lungs), also had abscesses all thru my abdomen. From my abdomen wall, laying against my left kidney, one in my lung cavity, etc. and they had to place 2 drains thru my back to the 2 biggest abscesses so they could try to drain the infection (pus) out of them as much as possible because it had caused me to be septic at this point. They told me that the abscess that was laying on my left kidney had damaged it so much that I might possibly lose that kidney eventually. I was in the hospital for 7 weeks, I begged them to let me go home and they did only under the understanding that I would have to have home health and keep the drains in to continue draining the abscesses. I had those in for a little over 2 months, even had them in through the death of my Dad unfortunately. About 2 weeks after his funeral I went back to the hospital to get the drains removed and to let them know I was having a lot of pain in my chest and my left side and back. They told me that the abscesses were almost gone but they decided to go ahead and remove them and just keep me on antibiotics for 2 more weeks to finish treatment for them. They ordered a CT scan of my chest to see why I was hurting and short of breath and they found a nodule in my left lung and said they wanted to keep a close eye on it by me getting a scan done every 3 months to make sure it doesn’t get any bigger and told me it could possibly be cancerous. My dad, and his father (my Papa) both passed away from lung surgery pretty early in both their lives, but I don’t even smoke so that was really upsetting to hear. I stayed there for a week and am now back home for now and really need a way of getting around to be able to get to doctor appointments and other necessary places like the grocery store, pharmacy, etc. Please help me be able to get a vehicle to have the chance to take care of myself like I should so I can live a better, more healthy life. Sincerely, Kristen Queen (Wounded Butterfly) the nick name that my family gave me after I survived having brain surgery in 2008 🙂