[ music | R.E.M – Try Not to Breathe ]

Well, crisis averted, the world moves on. The bleeding was minimal, stopped fast, and by Sunday night, the only lasting effect was some decreased use of her right hand. The musculature is just as strong, she can squeeze her fingers just as well as ever, but opening her hand doesn’t seem to work, so she’s going to need some rehab for that. Other than that, there’s no slurred speech, no muscle tone loss, no drooping of the facial muscles on the right side, zip.

They were unable to find the cause of the clot, however. They did CT scans and an MRI with contrast, a body scan to look for tumors, did an echo cardiogram, blood work, nothing abnormal showed up. During the MRI, they were looking for aneurysms, and found none, but they did find four older small clots. Before now no one had determined the physical cause of her dementia, so there’s some speculation these may have been at least a partial cause. It’s odd because there were never any symptoms of stroke, so both the unknown origin of these clots and when they occurred are mysteries. But they put her on heparin in the hospital, and she’s on a long term blood thinning agent. She’s back at the home and doing quite well now.

One of these days I’m going to get a little rest, too. 🙂