Jane’s Stroke Blog

Nearing the second Injection

July 24th, 2007

Jane’s condition to date. Jane has many problems as do all the other patients here and we( me and the doctors and our helper) are very watchful for new developments and improvements in any and all of the problem areas. I wish I could say she is on her feet walking, but that would classify as wishful thinking. Important of course, that we keep hope alive but reality is daily too. Jane’s attitude turns out to be similar to other patients at the one month mark, they want to go home. Persisting with this is the only thing to do. We must go on. She controls her environment in ways she can and that includes not eating well or not wanting to work hard on her homework exercises. Push too hard and she resists, while us giving in does not get her stronger. She is weak in general but again this seems to be consistant with other patients. The doctors are giving her meds and glucose to help. Jane does not exercise her talking much only when pushed by us and the therapist and doctors does she vocalize. It is easier to not talk I guess, so no change here.

Memory is a funny thing. Jane can remember many things from past and present but seems to have selective memory on the short term daily occurances. I am sure some memory problems are due to the strokes but it feels like some are not. I think when she gets confused or experiences sensory overload, she does worse on the memory end. We test her daily to see if it is better and so far can not determine.

Jane has some definite changes though. She can move her left leg away from her while dangling it from her wheelchair. This only started two days ago. But it is on and off again. She still can not raise her leg from the hip. Jane has achiness in her left leg that has been with her since she had two clots there last July. The feelings are like restless leg syndrome and usually occures more during the day than at night. That has not gone away and may not. The doctors have on meds for Restless leg syndrome though. They have been quite successful at reducing or eliminating her bladder infection. I know they do not see any more red blood cells in the urine as was there at the beginning. So now we are going ahead with training the bladder by clamping off the catheter for periods of time to fill the bladder. We have been successful in getting her to pass urine through normal channels and she thought she felt something as the bladder filled to about 350 cc in 12 hours and that is when we notice her pad wet from urine. So far so good. Maybe we can eliminate the catheter by the end of our stay here. Bowels have a ways to go though. Her appetite is still low and swallowing sort of ok. Sleeping has been ok too.

We have 4 more weekends to go to be out and about. On Sunday morning we walked to The Temple of Heaven to tour. The weather was perfect at 9 am around 80 degrees and overcast. Stayed that way till around 11:30 am. We returned on schedule at 12 noon. Pretty bushed but the three of us enjoyed the Temple and grounds. This coming Sunday, we plan on shopping at The Pearl Market also in the am. We hope the injection on Thursday goes well and she recovers well so that Sunday stays on the calendar.

Well that is sort of how our week has gone. They say that Persistance Is Not A Pretty Thing, well we will keep going because the doctors are saying that more will happen after the next two injections. Can’t go home without them.

More later

Jake and Jane

Entry Filed under: stroke