Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Mid-day Update from the Doc

This is Brad, not Leigh writing this, so Leigh may get on here and make changes later. Right now she's gone in to visit Lynne. Also, John just got here and is staying through tomorrow. Chuck and Leigh met with Dr. Anyawoo (the one the family met with initially on day 2) a few hours ago, and he had several new pieces of news.

He has ordered an EEG to see if there's any evidence of seizures. There are no outward signs of them, but they think that this could be causing her exhaustion and inability to focus. Also, this allows them to measure more directly how her brain responds to certain movements, thought patterns, etc. and will allow them to more accurately diagnose and treat her in the future.

He has ordered another ultrasound to make sure that everything is healing OK. As I understand it, this is the same thing they do every morning already.

Evidence points to the fact that Lynne had a stroke sometime in the past few days, which would explain the change in demeanor. We saw a huge personality shift, as well as a decrease in communication between Sunday and Monday, and the speculation is that it may have happened somewhere in there. Also Lynne is now less able to control the right side of her body, also pointing to the possibility of a Stroke. The doctor was very clear in saying that if she had a stroke, it was a small one and not something we should be extremely concerned about. Kind of weird, I know, but we have to trust him.

If they feel it's necessary, they make a small opening in her head to insert a probe allowing them to monitor the pressure inside her brain directly. I don't know when this decision will be made, or what the determining factors will be. I'm sure we'll find out more later today or tomorrow.

Dr. Anyawoo keeps reminding us of the initial conversation he had with us. In it, he told us that there were many high risk days between Day 1 and Day 12. Today is Day 10. Saturday is the big mile marker we're shooting for. Ups and downs of varying degrees were to be expected between Day 1 and 12, and these days cannot be reliably used to gauge progress or regression. The doctor was very clear that this is something to be expected; after Saturday we'll begin looking at diagnosing where Lynne is and treating her more aggressively.

Right now, Lynne is very sleepy, like it was back in the beginning. My understanding though, is that sleep is important for the healing process. We continue to hold out hope that better days are ahead. We'll update again later today as we know more.

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