A normal day of fun turned into a terrifying ordeal for one Michigan family after a father of 3 collapsed at home with a life-threatening brain hemorrhage.
Husband and wife Tom and Grace Gallagher had spent the morning out on Lake Superior with their children and friends. Back at home, they were trying to figure out a plan for the rest of the day.
Grace has now shared how that day unfolded in a video on Instagram. Caught on the family's home security camera, social media users can see Tom touching the back of his neck and retreating to the bedroom "trying to shake off" the extreme sudden head pain he was experiencing.
A few minutes later, he called Grace for help. Grace tells Newsweek that she wasn't expecting anything serious when she walked into the room with her daughter Murphy. But when she saw tears in his eyes, she knew something was wrong.
"I knew immediately this was different than his regular migraines, but I was not expecting it to be life and death. When he broke down crying, I knew we had to go to the hospital," the mom of three told Newsweek.
Grace and Tom rushed to the local hospital, where a CT scan confirmed a bleed on the brain.
The hospital, despite its size and resources, could do little to alleviate Tom's pain, and the severity of his condition required him to be airlifted to a specialized neurointervention facility.
Grace recalled Tom frequently asking to be put to sleep because the pain was "barbaric."
"While everyone is poking and prodding him, I was sitting there googling everything a doctor or nurse mentioned. Googling symptoms is bad enough when it's not blood in the brain. Basically, all I was reading was that Tom was about to die," Grace said.
Assuming the worst, Grace told Newsweek that she succumbed to emotion and broke down on the way home. "Every negative thought about him [not] surviving was crushing me. It took me some time, but I knew I had to get home, get my kids situated and get as quickly to his hospital as possible."
After 10 days in an intensive care unit, Tom was finally stable enough to return home. Grace says they're celebrating the wins when they can.
Fortunately, Tom's prognosis for this type of brain bleed—a subarachnoid hemorrhage—and how it's stopped is favorable to his condition, Grace told Newsweek. But Tom has a long road to recovery.
"He's developed a lot of limitations in his strength, stamina, and coordination along with significant amounts of persisting pain," she said.
The Gallagher's children (4, 2 and 1) have taken on the role as nurses for their dad and been "extremely patient" with his limitations compared to how he was before, Grace said.
Since it was posted, Grace's clip has gained over 600,000 views and has received an outpouring of support from other Instagram users.
"What really stood out are the messages from other survivors, family of other survivors, and family of people who had the same thing happen that didn't make it," Grace told Newsweek.
The Gallaghers were also offered food and money or if they could support the family in any way on their own accord. A GoFundMe page has also been set up to aid with the family's medical bills.
"If anything good can come from this, to let people be aware of a rapid onset of 'the worse headache of their life' and/or other neurological dysfunction... that would be a great silver lining," Grace told Newsweek.
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