Minnesota man recounts lengthy journey to recovery from cerebral hemorrhage

[Duluth News Tribune, June 30, 2015] On a November morning in 2011, Kraig Lee was hit with the worst headache of his life. The 58-year-old Wannaska farmer took several over-the-counter pain pills. They didn’t help.

He called his wife, Bonnie, who was at work at the family’s hardware store in Wannaska.

By the time she got home, he was lying on the floor. He needed to go to the emergency room, he told her. He thought he might have had a stroke.

Kraig was rushed by ambulance to LifeCare Medical Center in Roseau, Minn., 18 miles north, where a brain scan revealed there was bleeding in the brain. The scan was sent to hospitals in Grand Forks and Fargo, N.D., but neither could handle his case, Bonnie said.

By mid-afternoon, Kraig was on a medical helicopter headed to Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, where extensive surgery and his long journey to recovery would begin.