Heartfelt message/update from Kyle Kuric’s wife

The following was posted around noon today by Kyle Kuric’s wife, Taraneh Momeni Kuric…

I don’t know where to begin. I want everyone to know how appreciative my family and Kyle are for all your thoughts and prayers. I knew Kyle was loved by many but the amount of support we have received has been surreal. I feel like I owe everyone details.

Kyle started having severe headaches out of nowhere on October 31st. He had zero signs or symptoms before this. He practiced that night even with the pain but the next morning he felt really dizzy and had to sit out the entire game. Anyone who knows Kyle knows that it’s really unusual for him to miss practice much less miss a game. He never complains.

By Monday it got worse and finally Tuesday morning when his team was flying to Berlin he stayed behind in Barcelona and the hospital had a CT scan made. The results were horrifying not only because of the tumor but the amount of swelling he had was unreal. With the help of our basketball family I somehow got to Barcelona to be with him, and his family arrived by Thursday morning so we could have the surgery.

Thursday was what I thought was going to be the hardest day of my life. Everyone was scared, everyone but Kyle. He put on such a brave face not showing a bit of fear. The surgery went very well without any complications. I was so relieved and I wanted to think the worse was over with. Unfortunately Saturday morning his surgeon came in fairly early and told us he was a bit concerned with his symptoms and decided to do a second surgery to check the pressure of his brain.

We waited praying everything was ok but then he came and told us the pressure was lethally high and that his pupils were fully dilated and non responsive. Everything else was a blur. All I remember was screaming and crying as his family mourned with me holding onto each other. I though I lost my best friend and soul mate. I thought my babies were about to grow up without ever having any memory of their father. I wanted to die.

Anyone who knows me knows how attached I am to Kyle and how even to this day when he leaves town for away games I cry saying bye to him. I always feared I’d lose him in some kind of freak plane crash or something as much as the team travels, but not to something like this. I couldn’t understand why God was doing this to me and what I thought was my perfect little family. The surgeons went on and performed a craniectomy and by the miracle of God his eyes reverted and they were able to decompress the pressure from his brain. Just the news that he lived was enough for me I didn’t even care what happened from there at that point. They went ahead and placed him in a medically induced coma and we sat by his side mostly praying and crying.

I spent those two days reading our last text messages and I watched every video and photos I had on my phone praying and praying for him to get better. His wonderful surgeon yesterday decided to slowly start waking him up and he seemed pretty stable but didn’t really open his eyes or talk to us. They did give us the good news that his tumor was a Grade I benign Meningioma.

Well today when they allowed us to enter his room for visiting hours (ICU is extremely strict over here) he was sitting up with eyes wide open and gave us the biggest smile! I can’t begin to explain the adrenaline rush I got and how ecstatic we are! The road to recovery is still going to be very long and I know there will be some bumps ahead but I don’t even care because my baby is alive and I finally saw him smile and look at me for the first time in what seems to be forever!

I just felt like I owed all of you details of the events that took place because I feel like all of your all thoughts and prayers helped guide the talented medical team to do what was needed to be done and for Kyle to fight through it. I haven’t been able to respond to all of your kind messages but please know that I have read all of them and it’s your messages that gave me strength to get through each minute of this. Thank you to every stranger to all my close friends, to all of our basketball family, to the medical team/hospital staff, and to my family and his family. No mother or father should ever have to go through this and not only did they have to feel the pain of almost losing their child but they they held me up and took care of me at those critical moments. GOD IS GOOD!! Please continue to pray because we still have to get through a lot of stuff. I love you all!!