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Denise' stroke required surgery to stop the bleeding in her brain. The doctors say that they sealed it, and that there appears to be no additional damage.
Her brother flew out from the West Coast to be with her. He reports that she's doing moderately well. He says her left side was affected. Her speech is affected, as has her vision. However, she seems to be thinking clearly and shows every sign of a good recovery.
She's recovered enough that we are continuing to write our story. The story is all her idea. She has a wonderful imagination. I'm just the super-editor, chief cook and bottle washer. I'm starting with her ideas and basic story line, and smoothing it out, making bridges between episodes and asking those silly questions all editors ask. You know the ones..."How did our hero get here?" "What's the reason this character is doing this?" "Why did we say this in chapter 1 and then this in chapter 3?" Yup, those nagging questions.
Worse, there's an eight hour time differential between us. So, just as I'm getting going, she's been there and done that and I'm rushing around just to catch up. But then, I get my revenge. She wakes up to the stuff I sent her during the night! Regardless, we're having fun and should have some semblence of a story in six months or so.
I'll try to keep you all informed. Thanks for all your good wishes and kind thoughts. Denise really appreciates them all.
Bye 4 now
Comments
Thank you
I am happy she is doing better.
Gwen
Definitely glad to hear that
Definitely glad to hear that it seems to be a primarily physical stroke, and not affecting mental acuity.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Stroke types
Don't discount the effects of a physical stroke on the ability of the sufferer to function well.
My sister in law had a stroke some 12-13 years ago and so far as anyone is aware she was not badly affected mentally. It affected her right side but also her speech patterns. With her left hand she could use her typer and tell us that she could think of what she wanted to say but struggled to actually form the speech with her mouth. This made conversations limiting and cryptic, despite all our efforts.
These days she can use a computer one-handed but not to the extent that she wishes to. Even when one is mentally unaffected the physical side can still interfere.
Penny
Considering she could have
Considering she could have been like one of my customers, I think that's minor. He's basically suffering from Dementia, and short term memory loss - at least, when it comes to remembering how to do something different. He bought a new computer because the old one was too slow for him. I set everything up, showed him where it all was and how to reach it - just in slightly new places to compensate for the new PC - and he's called FOUR TIMES claiming that everything is different/moved/can't find it/isn't on his computer. That's after I walked him through it in person, showed him where everything was, and he was good with it. One day later, and his memory is erased and he expects it all to be exactly like his old machine. (This is a year after the stroke)
My grandmother had Parkinson's disease. She couldn't talk worth a damn, and the arthritis made it so she couldn't even use hands/fingers to mime out things. There's a lot worse than physical stroke effects out there. I'm grateful that Denise seems to have avoided those, so far.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
'There's a lot worse than physical stroke effects out there'
Bibliophage is right. My Mother's stroke left her with no physical effects at all, but she has hardly any short term memory, it can be a couple of minutes or just twenty or so seconds. The doctors did not even realise she had had a stroke until they did a cat-scan the day before letting her come home and then found she had had a massive stroke and were amazed she could walk and talk. Her doc said she should be bed ridden with months of rehabilitation a head of her before letting her home. So in that way she was lucky and allowed home, but if given the choice she said early on she would have preferred a physical effect, not one thatt robbed her of her memory.
Since then a minor second stroke and Dementia have affected her further and luckily she no longer realises what she has lost. Before then it hurt her greatly knowing what the stroke had robbed her of.
Sophie
Cheat sheet
Perhaps you could provide her with a visual cheat sheet. That way she can see the differences, adapt to them more readily and be able to function witout so much help. You just have to accept that every day her memory gets wiped and she has to relearn stuff... its still there but the connections are messed up and she can't access it conciously.
Hi Theide
Yes, I use to do that, but the Dementia has taken her past that point now. She is more often or not a little girl now mixed in with different times of her life. But her memory span is so short now that although she can still read, she does not understand what she is reading.
I do agree that for someone who has not reached that point yet it is one of the best things you can do for someone. Some of the things I did was a A4 photo of outside the bungalow with the address at the bottom in big letters to remind her where she lived (if you asked her she would give you an address from 50 years ago and describe another house altogether). Another thing one can do is on a A4 piece of paper (standard size for use in ring files in UK, US uses a smaller sized paper), with the day, date and year placed where she can see it all the time.
The list goes on, but you get the idea.
Sophie