Woman couldn’t talk, walk after brain bleed. Now, she’s coming ‘home’ to Hilton Head
Serena Grumbine woke up in the hospital Jan. 8 and spoke for the first time since Dec. 9, 2018.
“I remember waking up from surgery and my mom was right there. I was able to start talking immediately,” she said. “It felt so good to speak again.”
The 22-year-old was living on Hilton Head Island when she was hospitalized three weeks before Christmas for cavernomas — or bleeds in her brain — that caused paralysis of the left side of her body and required several rounds of surgery.
Now, Grumbine is recovering at the Shepherd Center for Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Rehabilitation in Atlanta, and making her first trip back to Hilton Head this weekend.
“Honestly I just miss being around people I know and love,” she said on Monday. “It’s pretty isolating being in Atlanta without your ‘family.’”
The “family” she’s talking about is the network of new friends who supported her when she lived on Hilton Head after moving from Rancho Cucamonga, California, in 2015.
They camped out in the waiting room at Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah in December to wait for results and greet Grumbine’s mom when she landed on an emergency flight to the Lowcountry.
They also helped her sell her car and pack up her apartment when her family realized she wouldn’t be able to live independently for awhile.
“I knew I had a good group of people out here,” she said. “They all reached out to help me.”
Grumbine is able to walk short distances now, and she uses a cane to transfer from the wheelchair. She’s speaking and working on regaining mobility in her left hand, but she said that recovery has been tough on her mind.
“My mind remembers what to do and I can imagine what to do, but my body can’t do it,” she said Monday.
How it started
Grumbine went to the hospital for intense migraines in October 2018, her mother, Stephanie, said.
She was showing signs of cavernomas, and unfortunately, her family recognized those signs.
Sixteen years ago, Grumbine’s brother, Simon, had an unexpected seizure at home. The 3-year-old was diagnosed with a brain tumor similar to a cavernoma and underwent surgery to remove it.
Then, Stephanie Grumbine saw a neurologist and discovered she had 10 cavernomas in her skull. The doctor confirmed that the condition was genetic.
The clusters of blood vessels aren’t necessarily rare. One in 200 people in the U.S. have at least one cavernoma, according to the Mount Sinai cerebrovascular center in New York City. They can exist without symptoms or they can cause seizures, migraines and loss of neurological functions.
If someone has the inherited form of cavernomas, they have a 50 percent chance of passing them on to their children, according to the cerebrovascular center.
In the 10 years since Stephanie Grumbine’s diagnosis, 15 members of the family discovered that they, too, have the bleeding condition.
But Grumbine said that expecting a recovery like her brother’s may have been a mistake. Her bleed was in a different part of her brain.
“I thought I was going to heal quickly, but everyone is so different,” she said. “The part of the brain where my bleed was caused a lot more damage, so there’s a few more obstacles for me.”
What’s next?
After her visit to Hilton Head and a dinner party with her island friends on Saturday, Grumbine is heading back to Atlanta to finish the last three weeks of the rehabilitation program.
Then, she’ll go to California for a longer outpatient program. She said she has a large biological family waiting for her there.
Asked about if she’ll ever come back to Hilton Head, Grumbine didn’t hesitate.
“I do fully intend to move back to Hilton Head,” she said. “It’s home.”
This story was originally published April 11, 2019 at 9:08 AM.
