Wednesday Update

Yesterday sucked out loud.... Swan posted about the day and as awful as it sounded, it felt worse.

Today Mom had the MRI. They told me that they were not going to have to put her on the ventilator to do the deal. But come to find out there was no choice. So she was on the vent and heavily medicated for the MRI. She was off the vent in 4.5 hours.

She had a medium stroke in the left side of her brain.... a small stroke in the top of her brain...and another small stroke in her cerebellum. The first 2 are understandable, since she is weak on the right, has no speech, and now we learn has no reasoning or understanding, and the carotid clean out surgery that kicked all this off was on the right side. The cerebellum is harder to explain. They are going to do an echo cardiogram to see if there is a clot in the heart that may have broken away and traveled to her brain resulting in the stroke in her cerebellum.

She is more awake today, according to my brother. She reaches for his hand and squeezes tight. He explained to her today that she has a daughter, son, 5 grandchildren, & 4 great-grandchildren.....she cried. We do not know if she cried because she is relearning this, or if she is confused because she isn't understanding language. But later, my brother called my niece and put her on speakerphone. Mom cried when she heard Nik. Maybe she IS understanding somethings.

We have a long haul. Until she can understand speech. She is not able to participate in therapy. She can't understand and comply with the therapists requests. If she continues improving, she will be moved to the neurology floor. And from there?...who knows.

Thanks again for all of the well-wishes.

T