Merry Christmas!!

Well this isn't exactly the Christmas we expected or wanted but it's the Christmas we got and we are thankful beyond words that we are spending it with Mom. Today means Mom has spent one more Christmas on this Earth than her mother got to, a significant milestone for her, one she mentioned to us last year.

To update you on her condition, she's improving every day. Her left eye is opening a lot more now. Her speech is still really labored but she's stringing her sentences together with more congruity. Overall I think she's doing great.

Tuesday Clint and I walked off the elevator to the most gawd-awful screeching and hollering. You'd think they were stringing somebody up by their toenails...and it was getting louder. It, whatever it was, was headed down the hall in our direction. A second later we saw that it was Mom and they had her on lap two of her new four-lap speed-walkathon around the unit. And the screetching was laughter. You'd think by the noises she was making that she was riding Shockwave for the first time. She had the entire staff in raptures as she most gracelessly glided, supported on either side by chuckling physical therapists, around the floor. At the top of her lungs....

So we saw her progress report. That made us laugh too. Every single benchmark was asterisked with the remark that we, the family, were overcompensating for her deficiencies:

FEEDING: FAMILY OVERCOMPENSATES FOR DEFICIENCY

GROOMING: FAMILY OVERCOMPENSATES FOR DEFICIENCY

VERBAL: FAMILY OVERCOMPENSATES FOR DEFICIENCY

VISION: FAMILY OVERCOMPENSATES FOR DEFICIENCY

Hmmmmm.... I wonder who raised us?

Aunt Heidi and I met with Mom's case manager, a sweetheart named Mary. She's the one who showed us the report and explained that it is compiled during a meeting of everyone involved in Mom's care every Tuesday. The chart basically showed a level of functionality that the average stroke patient who presented with her symptoms achieves within the first few months of recovery along with Mom's functionality represented by a line well below the former. She's excelling at some things and lagging at others as is to be expected. She went on to explain that Mom would be discharged only after she fails to exhibit significant improvement over the course of a couple of weeks. Right now it looks like she's going to be in here for at least another four to six weeks barring a drastic move one way or the other.

Aunt Heidi seems most concerned about Mom's somewhat debilitating lethargy. It kind of confused Dr. Milligan when Mom came in. Lethargy like hers is often associated with a brain stem stroke but the rest of her symptoms pointed to the final diagnosis of the midbrain event. Everybody thought that the stroke could have been caused by an irregular heartbeat but it's looking more and more like the irregular heartbeat was a result of the stroke. Truth is we'll probably never know what caused it, that is to say we'll never know where the blood-clot that caused it came from, but if we can trace what activities Mom was engaged in leading up to this we can help prevent it from happening again.

Aunt Heidi's of the opinion that Mom might suffer from 'Sleep Apnea' which occurs when one stops breathing for extended periods of time during deep sleep due to obstruction of the airway by the throat. I understand that this can affect the oxygenation of the blood and lead to daytime fatigue and there are currently studies being done to prove significant links between sleep apnea and stroke.

As far as I know they haven't explored any viral possibilities. I only bring this up because Christi is just now getting over a bout with mononucleosis and we do live in West-Nile country.

I now believe that her lethargy might have been what brought this on. If she stayed in bed for extended periods of time before this a blood clot could have formed somewhere other than the heart. It could have formed in her leg and traveled north, but none of this is important now as they'll most likely have her on some form of blood-thinning medication from now on which should prevent another stroke in the longterm. Why we need to figure this out is for recovery. She needs her energy and lots of it so her synapses fire and they fire a lot. As I said in an earlier post, the brain doesn't 'heal', it just figures out new ways to get the info from point A to point B. The more she works at it, the more opportunities the brain has to figure out the work-arounds.

So here we're spending Christmas in a hospital in Amarillo and we are thankful for it. The grandkids'll be here this afternoon and I heard tell that Santa might be making a special visit after his little globe trot. Wish we were home and wish Mom was healthy but that's not the way God saw it happening for us this year, guess it beats the snot out of the alternative given the circumstances.

From our family to yours, thank you for all your prayers and support. We hope that as you read this you and your family are happy and healthy and please have a very merry Christmas.

-Clay (and the Corn Family)