eDOC wrote:Hi ChuckArbogast,
Sorry to hear about your mom.
1. Type of stroke, risk factors like hypertension, diabetes etc.
2 You wouldn't know the damage/ after effects for a while.
3. Conventional med cannot help in damage control. They can only offer Mannitol infusions to reduce ICP, blood thinners, Diabetes or hypertensive control... Total palliative.
4. Neither would they allow supplements of any kind, forget about DMSO.
5. What she actually requires is DMSO infusions, besides other supplements, meds. Without it she could develop some kind of hemiparesis etc.
Hope she gets well soon.
Good luck.
eDOC!!
EDIT:
BTW, by now they must have performed a CT to see for its type.. Most likely thrombotic?
Modern medicine is only good till diagnosis, treatment is merely palliative for most serious disorders.
A few questions:
1. Is she awake, breathing normally.... Or slightly comatose?
2. Is the speech normal or a slight slur?
3. Eye opening?
4. Upper, lower limbs movements, hand grip, finger movements... restricted?
eDOC!!
eDOC,
Thanks for the reply. Here is what I know right now,
- I don't know the type of stroke but she did have a CT scan and MRI done but I didn't know to ask for the details like the type.
- She smoked all her life, 68 now, and has high blood pressure but not diabetes. She had her right carotid artery "cleaned" about 20 years ago. She went into the hospital due to chest pains, blood work show signs of a heart attack. The did a CT scan of her chest and said there were lots of calcification and then they did a catheterization. That showed she had 95% block on two arteries (one being the widow maker near were a branch artery is) and the other one on the opposite side. There was a third artery block about 70%. They wanted to do triple bypass surgery. They moved her to a different hospital (UVA Medical in Charlottesville, VA) to have this done. While there, they checked her carotid arteries again. The right side which was worked on 20 years ago as I mentioned earlier had basically block back up completely and now her left one was significantly blocked (not sure of the percentage). What they ended up doing this past Tuesday was going in and "cleaning" the left carotid artery (not doing anything to the right one) and after that doing the triple bypass surgery (only able to use one artery from her chest and the others were veins).
- When they take her off the sedation, she is awake. She was able to breath on her own but she wasn't strong enough to get the secretions out of her lungs on her own, so they put the breathing tube back in so they could let her get stronger and the said they are lightly assisting her with breathing but she is initiating the breathing on her own.
- Since she still has the breathing tube in, we don't know if she can speak normally yet. She seems to be answering yes/no questions normally and it seems like she is saying she loves us with her mouth when we say it to her.
- Both of her eyes do open but not sure how well she can see with them. She nods yes when we ask her if she can see us but nods yes when we ask if we were blurry. She has said she can't hardly see without her glasses on normally, so I don't know if it is because of that or the stroke.
- It seems like her right side is ok as they are moving. The only thing she can do now with her left side is squeeze our fingers with her left hand. No left arm movement or left leg movement yet.
- They are probably going to put a tracheostomy tube in as well as a gastric feeding tube in so she can have the breathing tube removed from her mouth and feeding tube removed from her nose. This will be done either this Monday or Tuesday but they might try to take the breathing tube out before that if they think she can do it. We already gave them the ok to do the trach procedure as we just want her to be more comfortable.
- She does have some swelling in the brain (not sure how much) but I was told that was normal after a stroke and it could be a week or so before it goes away.
I understand that the hospital won't want to put her on anything but "standard" medicine but do you think they would put her on Vitamin C or something else like it since I have heard some mainstream hospitals doing that? Not sure if Vitamin C would help a stroke but it may help in not getting infections.
Since I live in central Virginia, I have no idea on what to do or how to get it done with respect of DMSO treatments, other than orally. Do you have any suggestions/recommendations on that?
Is it possible her condition will improve without any "non-standard" care?
Just worried for her quality of life after this.
We knew there was a higher risk of stroke during the bypass surgery due to her risk factors but it hard to see her quality of life be worse than before the surgery, even though I know that if she didn't have the surgery, she could die suddenly.
Sorry for the long post but I figured it would be best to give you as much information as I know now. I will try to talk to someone today that would know what type of stroke it was.
Thanks,
Chuck