My tweets

  • Sat, 8:09:

  • Sat, 12:33: [EDIT: This is changed slightly from when I first posted it, as I got a couple of details wrong.]

    Okay everyone, I have an update about my mother, and it is not a good one.

    Mom woke up Thursday morning with slurred speech and "respiratory distress." She was taken to the ER and later to Kootenai Health in Coeur d'Alene. She was taken to the ICU for oxygenization, and they kept her overnight.

    While there in the ICU, yesterday morning she had a pretty massive stroke. They gave her medication at 10 a.m., but by 4:00 she stopped speaking and was paralyzed on the left side.

    She was administered a treatment for a blood clot in her brain, a treatment that has the rare side effect (4-6% chance) of causing hemorrhaging, and unfortunately this rare side effect occurred. They have since administered a counter treatment meant to stabilize the bleeding, for which there is no feasible surgical intervention option.

    Since yesterday, she has been on a ventilator, and she received CT scans both yesterday and this morning. As of this morning, it "wasn't dramatically worse," with not a whole lot of new bleeding. They want to keep observing her for another 24 hours to see if she will wake up a little more and to see if she can tolerate being off the ventilator.

    Apparently this hospital has no active COVID cases currently, but they are still only allowing one visitor per 24 hours, so I still have been unable to determine if or when we should head over there. Shobhit and I had plans to head for a two-night stay on the coast tomorrow.

    But, honestly, it does not look good. The ICU doctor I spoke with was not especially optimistic about her chances—nor was he especially pessimistic either, to be clear; it just seemed to tip slightly to the pessimistic side—and even if she does last a while, there's no way she'll be back home any time soon, if ever; her next stop would have to be in a rehab or nursing home facility, that latter option being especially frightening to me in the current health crisis climate. Bill in particular is understandably beside himself and very upset.

    1:13 pm update: I just got off the phone with the neurology doctor, who was kind of emotional herself, especially talking about having to speak to Bill about the treatment going badly. On the upside—maybe?—she told me, "Believe it or not she looks better than i expected this morning." She was "literally expecting the worst" but she is moving when stimulated, like pinched or whatever, which is a good sign. That said, she also added, "She's not going to get out of this without significant disability."

    Prognosis is "still quite guarded," was the phrase she used, but they want to keep her for another 48 hours to see if she starts following commands like "wiggle your fingers" or "give a thumbs up," which she has not yet done, and once she does that, it means "she's there inside." If that doesn't happen, however, then some tough choices will need to be made, about her wish not to be in a vegetative state.