In a way.. She has to relearn her language skills by practicing writing down what she thinks.. and talking to us.
Day 63 Yesterday was a full two months since her "accident" on Nov. 20. Her uncle invited us to a dinner to celebrate both her miraculous recovery as well as her cousin's birthday. They took us to a nice small restaurant in Bukit Damansara - La Suisse. Dinner was great - pasta, rack of lamb, fish & chips, etc. So was the beer and wine! Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera... Arghhhh!! It was great to be able to sit down with them for a nice meal. Today marks the beginning of the 3rd month since her accident. She has come a long way since her accident. I hope she will continue to progress well this third month.
Day 64 Today started off as a pretty good day. I took her for physiotherapy which went well. She did some exercises, of course, but the best thing for her was the heat therapy which gave her quite a lot of relief for her leg pain. Unfortunately, this afternoon, she suddenly complained of severe headache. It brought back memories of October 20, so we rushed her to the hospital. Before she could make it out of the house, she was already vomiting. Things got real bad on the trip to the hospital. Even though I had my emergency lights on, and I was flashing my headlights, there were many drivers who refused to give way. Some even intentionally slowed down. It took me about 20 minutes to reach the Sungai Buloh Hospital. However, it seemed like my rush was for naught because the staff at the emergency department seemed rather nonchalant! So I had no choice but to call up the two consultants who had been super nice and approachable to us, Dr. Lim and Dr. Lau. Dr. Lim immediately came down and helped me push for an urgent CT scan. Even so, it took them over 40 minutes to get it done. The CT scan confirmed that she had a rebleed of her AVM. The clot was about 4x3 cm in size and located a little to the rear of the earlier clot. It was also bleeding into her ventricles... The good news is that she was still conscious, albeit a little confused sometimes. Because she was still stable and conscious, they decided to adopt a wait and see approach. So they put her in the ICU again, this time just to monitor her consciousness. They plan to do another CT scan around 11 pm to 12 midnight. If her condition worsens, then they will operate on her immediately. Otherwise, they plan to just wait and see... I just came back to collect some of her stuff... and I will be heading over soon.
Day 65 They sent her for a second CT scan at 1 am in the morning. The picture in this scan was virtually the same as the first one that was taken at 5:30+ pm yesterday, so it looks as if she had stopped bleeding by the time the first CT scan was taken. As the clot did not increase in size, and she was awake, stable and well-orientated most of the time, they decided to adopt a wait and see approach. So, no surgical intervention as far as they can help. When I came over to visit her this afternoon, she was better. Obviously, the clot is still in there, increasing the intracranial pressure somewhat, but they managed to control her headache and nausea using just paracetamol (PCM) and maxolon (metoclopramide). She still has some headache and nausea but it's now tolerable. The good news is she seemed to have survived this insult pretty well. It is probably because the new clot is occupying more or less the same spot as the previous clot, so the resulting stroke had very little effect on her mental capacity. She can still remember almost everything she did before this most recent bleeding. She will be staying in the ICU for at least another day or two just for close observation. If her condition changes for the worse, they will immediately act on it, most likely by inserting an extraventricular drain (EVD). Otherwise, they will just monitor her... and send her for another CT scan tomorrow morning.
