For those of our friends here who haven’t heard, Joe had a stroke on the way to work last Monday. He suffers from hypertension, and although he’s religious about taking his medicine, his blood pressure shot up unexpectedly and he bled into his brain. What a terrible day, one of the worst in my life. I don’t cry much, but I made up for it in that Emergency Room at Palisades General where they first took him. I was holding up ok until they asked him to sign a form. He struggled and struggled and I just started to sob, with the nurse’s insincere “you have to be strong” and me yelling back GIVE ME A MINUTE! All those visions of stroke victims with droopy faces slurring their speech flashing through my head, thinking to myself, our life just took a left turn.
He’s at Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan. In just a week he’s made a remarkable improvement. His left side was unaffected by the stroke, but he had weakness on his right side affecting his leg, couldn’t lift his right arm the first day, and had no muscle tone on the right side of his face, and was virtually unintelligible and having trouble swallowing. Now he’s walking about, feeding himself with his right hand, and the slurring of his speech is much less pronounced. He can’t drink water yet or items with a water-like consistency, he’s still aspirating them, so they serve him thickened drinks. They stopped serving him mushy food, he even had a real hamburger on a bun last night, and a real fruit salad with angel food dessert for lunch.
He’s ready for physical, occupational, and speech therapy (he’s had some basic sessions so far.) Tomorrow they’re deciding on in-patient therapy at an acute rehabilitation facility, or out-patient. Cornell’s acute facility is in Midtown Manhattan, right on the East River. So even though it’s only a few miles away on the map, it takes me 3-1/2hrs each day of travel time round trip to see him by car or mass transit. Also their rehab facility is out-of-network for Joe’s PPO and only covered 80%. We don’t want to compromise his recovery, but a closer one, with equivalent care, that’s in his PPO network is much preferred. There’s an 11-bed facility at Hoboken University Medical Center just one town up which would be GREAT. We’ll know tomorrow if there’s bed availability and if not figure out our alternatives.
If you can use the work lucky with this ordeal, he was lucky. He could easily have had memory loss or loss of cognition and we’d be living very different lives. He’s himself though, just with some physical challenges to be worked on. Hopefully the therapy will help, all the medical staff thinks so. I’m hopeful. CARLOS
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first: very sorry to read about this – though I obviously don’t know you two, your obvious suffering transcends acquaintance and I wish you both the best.
I don’t know Joe’s status, but if you need to return to Cornell in the city, Sloan-Kettering has a free shuttle jitney from their out-patient facility at 53rd and 3rd (E, V and 6 trains) to their main hospital, which is right across York Ave. from Cornell. You’re supposed to be staff or patient, but it’s rarely ever full, no questions asked and the drivers are very accommodating. This can make a J.C to Cornell trip about an hour total (1 way). Good luck and thanks for the blog (new J.C. transplant ) Peace.