Wednesday, January 5, 2011

At least, I think it's Wednesday - the days are just sorta starting to blur together a bit.  I'll just go with it.

So today we had an angiogram, which is a procedure where they snake a tiny camera from a large artery in your groin up to your neck.  Just the usual fun for Dwaine these days.  But he came through beautifully and is now resting comfortably in his room.  He's had a hit of Thorazine to eliminate a stubborn case of hiccups, so he's pretty out of it. 

They found a tear on his carotid artery, just as they'd suspected.  They want to wait to fix the constriction they found in it until after his brain has had a few weeks to heal.  They don't want to "turn on the floodgates" until things have had a chance to settle down.  But in the meantime, he can do whatever he wants (which is SLEEP, it seems!  LOL!)  But he'll be working on his cognitive therapy and physical/OT therapy in the meantime. 

Interesting thing from the speech therapist today.  She has a cognition test where you look at a book with pictures and you either have to say what the picture is, or what the letter is, or what's wrong with the picture, or what pattern is shown on one page after another.  It's very clever.  Dwaine seemed to do fine, but she didn't really go through the results with us until tomorrow.  I don't notice much about his cognition - when he's not completely exhausted, and even though his speech is not clear, what he actually SAYS makes perfect sense.  Understanding him is MY problem.  And when he's not too tired, he speaks a lot more clearly.  I'm really confident that, with a big chunk of work, he's going to get his speech back to normal. 

And just a few minutes ago, I saw him use his left hand to scratch his face!  I don't think he even knew he did it.  Yeah, it was maybe a little cludgy, but considering he couldn't even lift his arm off the bed when we got here, it's amazing.  Again, with a lot of hard work, we're going to get his strength back!  Or at least as much of it as any person can possibly get. 

As I talked with the doctor after his angiogram, I was struck by how close we came to losing our Dwaine.  He told me the tear was almost as long as a finger!  That he's battled back so far, so fast, is a testament to those Schmidt/Taylor stubborn genes!  We're all really lucky to have him with us, and for many long years to come.

So, signing off from the twelfth floor of University Hospital, deep in the heart of East Colfax, I say Good Night and Sweet Dreams everyone.