Currey and Emily DeArmit were excited to take a quick trip to the Bahamas at the beginning of December. After having two babies in the last three years, the trip was going to be a break they needed.
All was great until the second-to-last day when Emily DeArmit woke up with a blinding headache.
“She tried to shake it off and walked into the balcony, and her vision started to go blurry,” said Currey DeArmit.
An ambulance ride later, a neurosurgeon in the Bahamas showed them a CT scan of her brain.
“It showed four little white spots, and those white spots were blood,” DeArmit said.
Emily DeArmit was in the midst of a brain hemorrhage brought in by arteriovenous malformation or AVM.
“It’s just something you’re born with,” DeArmit said. “You develop it in the womb.”
Some people never experience a symptom and have no idea they have it. Emily’s had ruptured, which required emergency surgery in the Bahamas to ease the swelling on her brain. She then had to be medically evacuated to a hospital in Miami, where she spent 21 days in the ICU.
She’s just been moved to rehab, where, if they’re lucky, she can leave in two to three weeks. Her mom is taking care of their daughters, both are under two and a half.
Emily is the former food and nutrition director for Chippewa Valley Schools. Co-workers have started a GoFundMe for the bills, which, even with insurance, are likely to be astronomical.
DeArmit says worrying about the bills will come later.
“Prayers are the most needed thing right now.”