Teen recovering after summer blood clot

In July, Tea teen Isabella “Bella” Abbas suffered a major blood clot in her brain.

Her mother, Kisha, noted that her daughter had been complaining of headaches off and on for about six months and then more frequently in the weeks leading up to having a seizure that landed her in the emergency room. Also leading up to the seizure, she was having some numbness on her right side.

“We rushed her to the ER and that’s when we found she’s got a blood clot in her brain,” Kisha said.

Unfortunately, when they got to the emergency room, Bella continued to seize so doctors put her in a medically-induced coma. By the next day, she had lost all feeling on her right side and doctors thought she had suffered some strokes as well.

After a scan of her brain, they found that the clot had grown and wrapped down and around her left ear. Their neurointerventionalist Dr. Kim was confident he could successfully remove the blood clots.

“He was the only doctor that gave us any hope. All the other doctors were preparing us for the fact that we probably wouldn’t bring her home,” Kisha said.

The doctor was able to remove most of the blood clots. Bella was put on blood thinners and put back into a coma to help her brain heal. While in the hospital, she developed pneumonia, which is not uncommon in this situation.

By the end of the week in the coma, blood was flowing in her brain again.

“It’s an amazing concept if you think about the fact that this is your main vein that runs through your brain and this is where the majority of your blood goes, but the body is an amazing thing where the rest of her blood vessels overcompensated for this part,” Kisha said.