My 47-year-old uncle had a stroke this Friday, 5/18. He was taken to the hospital from work via ambulance. There he was told that he had a minor stroke, and although he had some weakness on his right side and some minor speech problems he was sent home the very next day. He lives alone and my mom, other uncle and I are his only family and are 800 miles away. On Sunday, his friends went over to his house to check on him and found him in bad shape. His right side was totally paralized and his speech sounded like he had cotton filling his mouth, but you could still understand some words. His friends rushed him back to the hospital.
This time, a neurologist was called in and my mom flew to be with him. The neurologist is saying that he had a blood clot in an artery in his brain stem that caused the stroke. Then when he was sent home, the blood clot continued to swell that artery doing damage to other arteries causing another stroke sometime bewteen Saturday and Sunday. Who knows how long he layed there after having the second stroke.
Today is Wednesday, 5/23 and he is worse. This morning, his left eye is dropping and he has double vision. His speech cannot be understood at all now, his words come out like babble/jumble. The neurologist is running another MRI today to see if something else has happened since yesterday and they are also waiting on some clotting test.
I guess I am just wondering where this will go next. The doctor keeps telling us that he has a chance to come back from this, but he is getting worse. Do they go up and down like this for awhile? They want to start him on physical therapy, but not until they get some more testing done since he has gotten worse. My mom is scared to come back home, because my uncle will be alone. I want to bring him here to our home town for rehab, but that is something that is still up in the air at this point. I'm nervous about him being in a rehab unit without family there to check on him and staff. He obviously cannot live alone at this point.
He is very depressed and emotional. He has always been a healthy, strong, active man. He has been taking medicine for high blood pressure for the past year or so and is a bit over-weight, but nothing out of hand.
I'm wondering if he will ever be able to live on his own again? I'm wondering if there are questions we should be asking doctors right now? Something we are missing? Anything to watch out for? This is all so new to us, especially for somebody so young. He is closer to my age, than my mom's age, so he is more like a brother to me than an uncle.
Thanks for any input anyone can give us. Right now, we just feel like our heads are spinning.