This past weekend, or rather Sunday, was quite a busy one (sort of). Saturday night we got a call from
the assisted living facility where Kris’s dad lives. The nurse there told us that he was having
problems moving his right arm and right leg.
Right away I thought, uh-oh, because he had the same thing happen to him
last year. In fact if it wasn’t a year
to the day, it was darn close. Last year
it ended up with him spending about two months in the hospital and a rehab
facility recovering from a stroke. So I
had a bad feeling about this call.
I drove over to check on him, and the nurse and I had a look at him, and he was definitely having trouble raising his arm, and he was sitting slouched down in his wheelchair. We had been there to visit him earlier in the day and he was using his walker to get around, so the fact that he was in his wheelchair was a bad sign. But he didn’t have any slurred speech, or facial droop, so I was hoping it was just something small that would just sort of get better in a few days. At the very least I would go back and check on him in the morning to make sure it hadn’t gotten any worse.
We got a call in the morning as we were getting ready to go check on him from the day shift nurse saying he was having significant trouble raising his arm to feed himself and there was a very noticeable facial droop. When we got there, we could see that he couldn’t use his right arm at all, and he was having trouble speaking, so we decided it would be best to get him over to the hospital. That led to about 6 and a half hours of sitting around to find out what our next step should be. While the CT scan didn’t confirm a stroke, the Doctor said that based on what he is seeing there is a high probability that he did, and since he doesn’t believe in running tests unless he’ll get some useful data from it, we are just going to move forward as if he did suffer one. At least he is realistic about what sort of tests he needs and what ones he doesn’t.
So basically, after discussing options with him, there isn’t much to do except evaluate him for physical therapy/rehab. That should happen Monday so we’ll know more then. I just hope it doesn’t end up taking as long as it did last year. The two months of rehab/therapy seemed to last forever. I think we would just like for him to be able to get back home.
I drove over to check on him, and the nurse and I had a look at him, and he was definitely having trouble raising his arm, and he was sitting slouched down in his wheelchair. We had been there to visit him earlier in the day and he was using his walker to get around, so the fact that he was in his wheelchair was a bad sign. But he didn’t have any slurred speech, or facial droop, so I was hoping it was just something small that would just sort of get better in a few days. At the very least I would go back and check on him in the morning to make sure it hadn’t gotten any worse.
We got a call in the morning as we were getting ready to go check on him from the day shift nurse saying he was having significant trouble raising his arm to feed himself and there was a very noticeable facial droop. When we got there, we could see that he couldn’t use his right arm at all, and he was having trouble speaking, so we decided it would be best to get him over to the hospital. That led to about 6 and a half hours of sitting around to find out what our next step should be. While the CT scan didn’t confirm a stroke, the Doctor said that based on what he is seeing there is a high probability that he did, and since he doesn’t believe in running tests unless he’ll get some useful data from it, we are just going to move forward as if he did suffer one. At least he is realistic about what sort of tests he needs and what ones he doesn’t.
So basically, after discussing options with him, there isn’t much to do except evaluate him for physical therapy/rehab. That should happen Monday so we’ll know more then. I just hope it doesn’t end up taking as long as it did last year. The two months of rehab/therapy seemed to last forever. I think we would just like for him to be able to get back home.
0 comments:
Post a Comment