Well! What an active past 5 days at my house! My 82 yr old very active hubby had gone to bed around 9:45 pm on Thanksgiving night. He got up at 11 to use the BR without any issues. I went to bed just before 12:30 am. He got up (I was asleep and didn't hear him) at 1 am to use the BR and later related that he was dizzy with a bit of a problem getting to BR and back, but did so. But then at 3 am he needed to use the BR again and it woke me up because I heard him moaning and trying to grab stuff. He said he couldn't walk, his legs had given out. I helped him to the BR and back and noticed his speech was slurred. We sat on the edge of the bed for a while. His blood pressure was good. I gave him 2 baby aspirin, but no improvement. So at 4 am, I called EMS and they took him to the ER of the hospital we use. After several hours of work-ups, CAT scans, MRI, it was determined he did have a small stroke in a small blood vessel in the rear central area of the brain called the pons. So he was admitted Friday, but has done so well that he came home yesterday!.....with a walker. His neurologist believes he will make a full recovery with a very small chance of recurrence (but who knows about that but God!). The neurologist told us that all his major blood vessels and his heart are in great shape, and that his medication regimen is perfect. He said it was just one of those age-related things in a very, very small blood vessel that got occluded. The hospital he was at does have its own stroke rehab floor, but hubby progressed beyond what they use as a baseline criteria for admission to that floor. Home health will be here in about an hour to evaluate him.
His speech is about 85% cleared up. His walking is pretty good as long as he uses his walker. He can use the bathroom, wash, shave, brush his teeth, comb his hair by himself. He can button his shirt, but needs help getting his pants on because he can quite yet manage getting his feet into the pant legs on his own. He cut his own fruit to put in his cereal. I poured some milk into a small measuring cup so he could pour the milk on his cereal that way instead of trying to pour it out of a half gallon bottle. He buttered his own toast and fed himself great.
We are blessed because the stroke did NOT damage ANY of his cognitive skills! And we know that God is in control of our lives. So many people have been praying for him since this happened, and the medical/nursing staff were amazed at his daily progress!