It began as a typical Sunday in November. Uday and his family were at church where his dad Samir is a pastor when he started complaining of a bad headache. His mom Sabby gave him Tylenol and suggested he lay on a couch at the church to rest. Once they were home few hours he took a nap. His mom thought maybe he had a flu so planned to take him to the doctor the next day rather than school. But then, when he awoke from his nap to go to the washroom, Uday suddenly couldn’t walk.
Uday was also having a hard time breathing so Sabby decided to take him to the Alberta Children’s Hospital right away. The hospital is only 15-minute drive from their house and by the time they arrived, he had almost no mobility and had difficulty getting out of the car. He had to be intubated in a trauma room so a ventilator could help him breathe. MRI scans revealed a shocking picture – Uday had 13 clots in his brain and an internal spinal injury, which seemed to have come out of nowhere.
The clots were too small to remove with surgery, but Uday stayed in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for 10 days, eight of those intubated, under the watchful eye of neurologist and stroke expert Dr. Adam Kirton and neurologist Dr. Michael Esser, head of the Neurocritical Care team. While Uday’s family rely on their strong faith, they also had faith and 100 percent of their trust in his medical team. When he began also having seizures, the team monitored his brain activity with EEG technology while giving him the right balance of medications and letting his brain rest through an induced coma. When he woke up, his parents and doctors were surprised to see him move his left leg. The next day, he moved his right leg. To them it was like witnessing a miracle. After 10 days in the PICU, he moved to Unit 4 for the remainder of his recovery, which included physiotherapy and occupational therapy. After 25 days in hospital, he was able to go home. Uday continues his rehabilitation daily at the hospital to strengthen his weaker side to regain his mobility, while also keeping up with his studies through the Gordon Townsend School. Uday has had seven MRIs. His latest on January 17 showed out of 13 original clots, only three remained.
Uday’s family are so grateful for the exceptional care he received, and continues to receive, when he unexpectedly needed the hospital, and to donors who support it with the best technology and expertise. Sabby and Samir were in awe of the Donor Wall and said to Uday “work hard so one day your name can be up on that wall too.”
