A Visit To The Principal's Office.

We had our social worker meeting yesterday. It felt a bit like an intervention or being sent to the principal's office. We all behaved though and no one laughed awkwardly. First we all went around the table and introduced ourselves which was hilarious because after 10 days here we've pretty much become buddies with the doctors and the nurses. The ICU doctor (a fairly stoic German man who mom refuses to do tricks for), the Neurologist (a gentle man with a grey mustache that's slightly reminiscent of Tom Selleck), Maryanne (our favorite nurse who feels like a mix between a Disney princess and Mary Poppins), a med student (who looked generally overwhelmed), some other neuro lady (nice enough I guess) and then the social worker and a woman who focuses on aftercare. Oh wait, also a brain surgeon - not Mr. I Saved Her Life because he's on vacay (natch), but another brain surgeon who was my personal favorite of the bunch because he seemed to be the most energetic. They told us the same stuff. The summary being "all in all she's doing really well considering what she's been through." Personally I think she's doing amazing, in fact I would describe it as "kicking ass and taking names", but I don't think that's something they feel comfortable using in official hospital meetings. She will only continue to recover at this point. The swelling has peaked and is on it's way down so in the next few days she'll become more active and more responsive. They also repeated for the millionth time how long of a road it would be and then laid on some Hallmarkian niceties. She's not out of the woods of course. She will probably get an infection here and there, but the stronger she gets the easy it will be for her to fight those.

By next Wednesday we hope to get her out of the ICU. Fingers crossed, toes crossed, lucky pennies, clovers, bunny feet etc. But where to next? Well, she had her tracheostomy today (which is great because she looks way more comfortable) and if she can breathe without the ventilator then she can go to the stroke floor for acute care. Just to be uber clear, she's breathing without the ventilator mostly now, but they put her on it at night so she can rest a bit. The ICU Dr. (stoic German) feels confident that she'll be able to handle it. She is PAM after all. After acute care, she'll go to a rehab center and work her tiny butt off. We don't know where that will be yet. They recommend we visit a few places before making a decision, but that's not something that we have to consider quite yet.

The less great news is that they don't think her left side will be functional. Now I get that I'm asking a lot from the universe, I mean, I did get my mom back. I can hear all of your voices saying "but at least…". Ya ya. I know. BUT. Think about THIS. You all know my mom. She doesn't like not being able to help herself. I'm terrified of watching her realize she will have to rely on others. One of two things will happen, she will close off and shut down or she will breathe hell fire and fight through. I'd prefer the latter, but I fear it will be the former. The stand-in brain surgeon (the energetic one) returned after the meeting and said that's it's "possible" that she could regain some movement in her left leg. We'll know by 3 months. Last night while we played her tunes and danced, she was twitching it, so here's to hoping.

While we sit here eating our Jimmy Johns and drinking Diet Coke she's getting a feeding tube in her stomach so she can get it out of her nose. Another thing to make her more comfortable and also draw less attention to her nose - something I know she'll appreciate. Thumbs up to that.