Miscellaneous

Grandma update, making good progress

By jeremyblachman

Last two days she's thankfully been back to herself -- the delusions have passed out of her system, it was almost certainly due to the sedatives she was given during surgery -- and although day to day progress definitely continuing and definitely noticeable, it's becoming a little more clear what the scope of the deficiencies are from the stroke.  Her speech has largely returned -- on a conversational level, it's not that easy to tell that anything's wrong, honestly.  There are some word-finding issues, but it's more when asked specific questions about naming objects than just in ordinary conversation.  But the more worrisome issues seem to be some vision loss -- her field of vision seems limited, she's not really seeing that clearly, or seeing things that aren't in her direct line of sight -- and some short-term memory formation issues.  It seems sort of like some things just aren't "sticking" -- some things are making an impression and she's fine, but things that aren't terribly important seem to be passing in one ear and out the other.  Like, she kept looking at what was on her bedside table to remind herself what was there, she didn't seem to be remembering from moment to moment.  We brought her bananas today, and every time she was looking at what she had, it seemed like they were new to her.  Part of that may be related to the vision and she's just not seeing things, but even things like how the TV remote works, what the physical therapy might be like, things like that, they're just not sticking no matter how many times we tell her. Which is frustrating, but more in the way that I fear they'll affect her ability to get along once she's out of the hospital than in terms of making conversation hard -- she's absolutely still herself, she's absolutely still able to have real conversations and deal with information and talk intelligently about things, people will still be able to have real relationships with her, she'll still be able to be engaged with the world at a reasonably well-functioning level... but if her improvement starts to plateau, I don't think she'll necessarily be able to do things like prepare food for herself, go shopping, use transportation, pay her bills....  But it's an encouraging sign that day to day progress continues -- yesterday she was unable to read her watch, but today it was not a problem at all (it's not a digital watch), yesterday she was unable to dial the phone, but today she was able to recall my mom's phone number from memory and dial it, although slowly.  We're hoping in a couple of days she'll move to a rehab facility where she'll get some physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy -- and that her vision will improve so that reading starts to come back (she's able to write her name at least, but not really read at all -- not sure how much of that is vision and how much is language-related), and that the short-term memory issues will start to resolve themselves.  But I'm much more optimistic than I was -- even at this level of function, I think she can still lead a fulfilling, although limited, life, and can still have real relationships with her friends and family.  But I'm hoping the improvement continues and she can get to an even better place than this...

Full post as published by Jeremy Blachman's Brand New Weblog on May 18, 2008 (boomark / email).