Update On Mom

 Mom gave us a bad scare last night. The ambulance came and Joan went down to St. Francis with her. Joan just sent this update:

Good morning family. If you thought you didn’t have anything to pray for this morning, you’ve got another thought coming.

At about midnight last night mom needed to go to the bathroom and as she tried to get out of bed, she fell out of the bed( a gentle fall) but she had her head stuck between the bed and the night stand and she was laying on her left side and couldn’t get up. She couldn’t reach her glasses to see her phone but she did the “ok google” thing to have it dial for her. She tried Matt a couple of times but it went to his voicemail. Then she tried, Judy, Ruth and me but her speech was slurred enough that the phone wasn’t recognizing who to call. Finally after more than an hour, she was able to get through to Diane.
Mike then called me and after seeing the weakness in her left side and the left side of  her face starting to droop, we called an ambulance.
The CT scan shows a hemorrhagic stroke meaning a brain bleed probably deep within the brain. They think it is stopped as in not actively bleeding now so they are monitoring her and lowering her blood pressure. they have called the neuro surgeons in to come check her out.

Well what we hoped was a small thing is actually pretty major. The neurosurgeon came in and said there is a significant amount of blood in the fluid filled cavities of the brain. They do think the bleeding has stopped but they are counteracting the Eliquis that she is on and also gave her a unit of vitamin k.  The neurosurgeon said she is very surprised at how well mom is functioning based on the cat scan and they are monitoring her almost constantly for any changes. The dr said that the irritation of the blood in those cavities can cause pressure to build in which case they would have to do a procedure to put a drain in her brain and monitor that to see if her brain could tolerate the drain being removed eventually. If not then they might be talking about a more permanent shunt but that would be down the road.

At this point we are talking about an extended hospital stay in ICU and they said the weakness and nonfunction that she has in her left arm and leg will not get better. She is still in the ED for now but as soon as they get a bed ready in the ICU she will be moved there.  I guess once she gets there we will see how it all goes.