In the Summer of 2005, there was a family medical emergency.

My mother, who is 77, had a stroke last night. She fell, bruised her right side, and passed out. This morning, she came to and walked over to the next door neighbor's to ask him to call her a cab to the hospital. He refused, and instead drove her to PacMed himself. At around 2:30pm, a message was left on my answering machine that I didn't get until I came home after 7pm. My friends R & R just brought me back from visiting her.

 

She's had a CAT scan, among other tests. They've given her water with her medications, and that's about it. She's lucid and can speak complete sentences with very little sluring, although I noticed that her mouth doesn't open all the way. They've tested her motor skills and have found that sometimes she has to be told to do something twice before her body will catch up to her mind, but she seems to understand the requests. She's even attempted to crack a joke. When I got there, I found that she had made her own way from the bed to the commode without help, and did so a few more times while I stayed with her. She's having trouble getting the main point of a sentence out, but is putting on a brave front and seems in decent spirits despite being somewhat terrified.

 

My siblings worked out a plan that my niece will move in with my mother temporarily once she's been released from the hospital. My brother will spend his days with her (I guess he works nights), and my sister and I will go over to see her when we can. I plan to high-tail it over to the hospital immediately after work until she's released, and figure the rest out afterwards.

 

The alcohol I've been having is starting to kick in, and there are still a few more relatives I'm trying to track down by phone. I know next to nothing about stroke recovery.

I have, since then, been spending about half my week at my mother's home, offline, doing home-care. We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of her stroke and after a winter funk, are now looking at our options.