After suffering from debilitating migraine headaches for more than three weeks, I arrived at MaineGeneral Emergency Room, which was overflowing with patients. I told the ED Doctor I believed that something had happened to me that caused the headaches, and the nurse at the Gardiner Express Care made me promise to stay until I have a CAT scan. He reluctantly sent me for the scan. When he brought the results back into the room, his demeanor had changed. He looked at me with genuine concern in his eyes and gave me the results. The prognosis was grave. He began, “You have a subdural hematoma with a six millimeter shift.” My brain was bleeding, and the pressure was causing half of my brain to be partially crushed against the inside of my skull. I was in critical condition and had been walking around with a ticking time bomb in my head for three weeks. At any moment, the pressure in my skull could cause a fatal hemorrhage or stroke. As soon as I was admitted, I was given a steroid that relieved the swelling in my brain. The next few days were a blur of intensive care reassessing while I waited for a room at Maine Medical and a life-saving surgery.

Four days after my trip to MaineGeneral I was wheeled into the surgical suite at Maine Medical Center for Brain Surgery. A hole was bored in my head to relieve the swelling, and a drain was placed in my head that would allow my injured brain to return to its normal position and the critical blood flow to return. Martha Couturier-Coleman saved my life. Without her genuine concern for my well-being, her instance on a promise, I may have left without the CAT scan.