Thursday, April 2, 2009

Day 11: Fishtank waiting room

We currently are sitting in the waiting room anticipating the outcome of a surgical procedure that Mom had to abruptly be sent to. In an earlier entry today, Brad stated that the Dr. A had ordered an MRI for Mom. The MRI cut Chuck's visit short with Mom (this was the visit that had us all smiling at her recovery) The results showed that Mom had been experiencing several strokes during the last few days. These strokes were directly down the center of her brain along the two major arteries in the brain. The area that affect motor skills. Dr. Hecht (the doctor that performed the artirogram on Sunday) called Chuck and explained that Mom needed to be sent in right away. He had him consent to a procedure that could possibly be angioplasty. They wouldn't know for sure until they were looking at Mom's brain.

Angioplasty is the technique of mechanically widening a narrowed or obstructed blood vessel. Apparently this procedure is very risky. Dr. Hecht explained that the skin of the brain is so delicate that it can tear. This would be difficult to correct and in that case, death is most likely to happen from bleeding in the brain.

Dr. Hecht came out and spoke with Chuck to expain what he discovered once getting inside Mom's head. The good news is that the blood vessels that are affected currently are not the large main ones but the smaller vessels. This means that angioplasty is not an options...So, that risk of tearing was gone. However, now these smaller blood vessels need to be treated, and the way to do that is through chemicals as was done on Sunday afternoon.

So, here we sit waiting another 45 minutes for the results from Dr. Hecht. We know that this is necessary to save Mom's ability to use her motor skills. We'll let you know more after we talk to him.

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