Encouraging, but limited answers...

Today (Sunday) brought encouragement in the form of additional tests, but we still lack clarity relative to the underlying cause of Thursday's incident  ... Doctors performed tests on Mom's heart in an attempt to pin-point the issues ... These tests revealed a healthy heart, with her valves functioning with normalcy and no other adverse signs ... Phenomenal news, although with this report comes another round of uncertainty in relation to the initial causal factors.

As it stands, perhaps one area that can offer some explanation is an irregular heartbeat ... Over the last +/-36 hours, monitors have signaled irregularity (which may be either the cause or the effect of the stroke) ... Doctors have continued to evaluate these levels, and had planned to initiate a regimen of medicines (dextrose amidorone for arrhythmia) to help regulate the beating ... Whereas dosage was planned to begin this evening, incredibly around 6:30, Mom's heartbeat clicked back to "Sinus Rhythm", which in layman's terms means pretty close to a perfect beating pattern ... There are occasionally some misplaced beats, but overall, she maintained the Sinus Rhythm throughout all of this evening ... Very positive, and we pray that this continues tomorrow and beyond.

Outside of this testing (and correspondingly, positive results but few answers), Mom had a very good day today ... She remained alert and engaged, and her speech remains around the same level as Friday/Saturday ... As Clay alluded in the prior post(s), her memory and cognitive skills are top-notch ... If we were to relate our in-room dialogue amongst family/friends to the show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire", Mom has continued to play the role of "Lifeline" :: She always seems to come through in the clutch with answers/corrections to any holes we may have in our telling of stories.

We will endeavor to continue to pass along updates as they become available ... We are hopeful that some level of therapy (speech, physical, etc.) can begin soon, and Mom can herself begin to feel the progress that we have witnessed over the past few days ... It is truly remarkable the strength she is maintaining (I need to admit that I just had to substitute the aforementioned adjective "remarkable" for a previously-typed "unbelievable" ... Never have we doubted her strength ... We always knew she would give this a helluva fight, and she sure keeps slugging away ... We anxiously await her landing the haymaker knock-out punch, and seeing her come out of this victoriously).

Thanks for the continued thoughts/prayers ... Please keep them coming/multiplying.

Clint