Life sure can turn on a dime. On Thursday, 12.21, Mom had small symptoms of a possible stroke, mainly loss of fine motor skills with her left hand. There was some confusion and she had a fall, but things improved throughout the day and her doctor was okay with her staying home and us watching her. Things continued to improve throughout the weekend and she regained much of her finger dexterity.
Then Monday morning, she fell before she came out of her room for breakfast. We rushed in and got her up, and she complained of some soreness. However, throughout the morning, she was unsteady on her feet. We got out her walker from the attic, and after lunch I decided to take her to urgent care just to make sure she hadn't fractured anything from her falls.
Urgent care x-rayed her pelvis and also did a CT scan of her head because of the possible strokes. She had no fractures but the CT scan showed a very large mass in her brain! They wouldn't let us leave and immediately transported her to Albany Medical Center. I drove home, we grabbed a few things, and headed down there. We spent all evening in the ER, finally leaving after 11:00 when they said they would soon be transporting her to a room. The plan was to do an MRI of her brain as well as a full body CT scan to see if there were other masses.
When we got there in the morning, she had fallen in the wee hours and had a gash on her forearm as well as some bruising. Because of that, she had an aide sitting outside her room all day as well as bed alarms and 24/7 video monitoring of her. We met with a whole slew of doctors, from neurosurgeons to neurologists to stroke doctors. The MRI showed that she had 2 recent acute strokes. The mass is the size of a tangerine or small orange and between the mass and the swelling, it has pushed the midline of her brain over to the right 11mm. However, they say it is very slow growing and might have been there for 20 years. The only thing to do for it is surgery, which everyone agreed is not feasible because of her age. They are treating it with steroids for the swelling, and have introduced anti-seizure medication as well as an aspirin regimen and statin to hopefully prevent more strokes.
She remained in the hospital until last night, when she was medically released to go to a rehab facility. Jim and I spent a crazy 24 hours working with the social workers trying to find her a facility close by that would accept her. They finally transported her last night to a facility in Glens Falls. It will be much closer than going to Albany, and we are going to meet with a facility in Saratoga hopefully Monday to see about a lateral transfer if we think that's a better option.
As we've certainly learned this year, life is precious and no day is guaranteed. We do our best everyday to remember that.
Christmas blessings to all reading this and our wishes to you for a happy, healthy new year!
