Young mother's skull filled with blood after she took drugs and suffered stroke

A young mother’s skull filled with blood after she suffered a massive stroke while high on drugs.

Courtnee Ison, 30, was left unaccompanied for up to 10 hours after taking the overdose at her home in Columbus, Ohio on Valentine’s Day.

The mother of four was rushed to a local hospital where surgeons performed an emergency craniectomy – removing part of her skull to drain blood and relieve pressure on her badly-damaged brain after the crystal meth binge.

Doctors initially warned that Courtnee could be in a vegetative state for the rest of her life, with her mother Lisa Kimberling now sharing her story in a bid to deter others from drugs.

Lisa said: ‘After the stroke, Courtnee spent between two and 10 hours laying unresponsive, until her boyfriend found her and tried to wake her up.

‘She was unresponsive, so she was rushed to hospital, where she had a craniectomy. There was a massive amount of blood on her brain.

‘Surgeons had to cut the whole left hand side of her skull out, to relieve the pressure, and clear out the blood from that side of the brain.

‘But there was some bleeding they could not get to, and her brain had shifted to the right, putting pressure on the side that hadn’t been affected by the stroke.

The young mother began taking pain pills recreationally when she was 18 after starting a relationship with a man who also took them.

She progressed to crystal meth around four years ago.

Courtnee’s abuse of the drug saw all of her children, who are aged between five and 11, taken off her, with Lisa now their carer.

At the time of the overdose, the one-time aspiring nurse was living in a hovel with no running water, heat, or electricity.

Lisa said: ‘This is the worst thing that you could ever imagine could happen to your child. Courtnee had a happy, loving childhood and was brought up in a loving, stable family that wasn’t short of money.

‘She had a very normal upbringing.

‘She just fell in to a bad habit, and it spiraled from there. I always said to her that there were four outcomes – recovery, prison, death, or an overdose with a serious outcome, although obviously there’s no pleasure in being proven right.’

Legal assistant Lisa and husband arranged for Courtnee to attend three different courses of rehab in a bid to help her beat her addiction, only for her to drop out within hours and continuously return to drugs.

But there is a now glimmer of hope for the addict’s future, with Courtnee breathing unassisted after being taken off her ventilator.

She has since given her mother the thumbs up, and is being given special stimulating medicine in a bid to rouse her from the coma.

Lisa, who credits her Christian faith for helping Courtnee’s recovery, has now vowed to ensure her daughter does not fall off the wagon again.

She explained: ‘When Courtnee recovers, she’s going straight back to a treatment center. And if she fails it, I now have grounds to apply for guardianship of her.

‘I have told her there is 4 ways out recovery prison – which I wished for – or an overdose with possible serious outcomes or death. 

‘I hope this is the wake-up call she finally needs to get better.’

And Lisa also revealed her noble motive for sharing the agonizing, decade-long experience she has been going through with her daughter.

She said: ‘I want to share her story with other people who might think “Oh this type of thing would never happen to one of my loved ones. I was that person – and it did.”‘

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