Thursday, March 3

Frank had a busy day today. When I arrived he was pretty wide awake and was finishing his breakfast. He was talking as much as yesterday. He was a tiny bit quicker with responses, too. I reminded him that he was in the hospital and that he had a stroke. A little after telling him that he said, "wow, I can't believe I had a stroke." He started remembering and listing off people who have come in a visited him this week. It is good to see that names are coming easier to him. He still has to think hard about things and it takes some time, and there are some things he can't remember at all still - but everything will take time. A little later in the day he mentioned getting back to work, and I reminded him that he needed to get 100% better and that everyone at work is praying for him and wants him to get better first.

Today the speech therapist cleared him for regular water, so he does not have to drink the thickened water. He was very happy about that and drank a lot.

He also went down for a CT scan of his adrenal glands. He also had a PICC line inserted - which is inserted into the arm and inserted up a vein stopping just above his heart. This allows them to put the medicine/IV fluids through this and to draw blood. Although it sounds painful, he said it didn't really hurt, and in the long run it will probably be better so he does not have all these IV needles in his arm with the risk of pulling them out.

He also had a little physical therapy done today. They had him get out of bed and sit in a chair, along with standing up and taking a few steps forwards and backwards.

I have not heard anything back about his kidney scans, but did talk to the doctor about the MRI results. First, the MRI was of only his brain, and not the whole body. It didn't show much more than the CAT scan from the other day. He had the larger main stroke that put him in the hospital. However, the CAT scan had originally shown an old mini-stroke, but the MRI showed that he had MULTIPLE mini-strokes scattered through out this brain. The thing is, they do not know what has CAUSED the stroke. They are not sure if he has a tumor that may be affecting his metabolism that is causing him to retain sodium which is leading to the high blood pressure and then to the stroke. They do not think is it anything related to his heart though because it is strong.

I am not sure what the plan of action from here is - if they plan on doing more tests to try to figure out how the stroke occurred and why he has high blood pressure, or if they will just try to treat the high blood pressure and continue on with therapy and eventual discharge from the hospital. I hope to get more answers tomorrow.

A therapy doctor did come in to talk to us. He said the main part of recovery for him is his memory, more than physical. We can all see that he moves well and it seems like that part will be easy. But with him still having a hard time remembering things and talking slowly, that will take some time. We'll have to take it one day at a time and see how he is once discharged from the hospital; he may need to go to a facility where he needs to stay all the time for treatment, or can be at home, and go do the therapy facility 4 times a week. Time will tell. Right now, we are anxiously awaiting to get him out of the CCU and into a regular room, but he is still on the blood pressure medication which is the one thing that is keeping him in this unit.