On January 30, Bruce had a small stroke, indicated by an inability to speak a complete thought. Betsy's neighbor drove him and Betsy to the ER. It was a blood clot type of stroke due to A-fib (irregular heartbeat). At that point they said it would be 2 nights in the hospital. Then, he had another stroke as the result of the blood thinner medication, that evening. This supposedly happens in about 5% of people they use this medication on.
Both strokes affected the speech area and a small vision area. Luckily there is no other damage, such as swallowing, physical strength, or mental capabilities. He can understand everything and has mental clarity, but expressive language and certain small motor skills are affected.
So he has been in St. Peter's Hospital in Olympia receiving good care here. Some days have been great - high energy and lots of words flowing (in an interesting way), and other days have been sort of "one step back" where he is extremely tired and just feels low. Yesterday and today have been low energy.
We have had a lot of family around and my brother Sam came out from Boston for a few days which was great.
Right now they are just trying to get everything stable enough to send him to a rehab facility where he can recover. They need to get the blood pressure to stay down and get all the pre-assessments for speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy. He is definitely looking forward to getting out of here. The prognosis is good.
We welcome your thoughts, prayers, messages for Bruce, and ideas that could be helpful in recovery.
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