posted 11-09-2001 05:57 AM
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Hi folks, I'm John, Jill's son from Los Angeles. I'm posting this update from the waiting room at the hospital she's in (amazing what you can do with with the right wires and a vacant phone jack). Here's the latest update on Mom:
She underwent surgery to repair the brain anuerism (burst blood vessel/capaliary in the brain) on Tuesday this week and is in recovery. While she is not out of the woods yet by any means, she is doing well so far. She is still pretty heavily sedated as we speak. The surgeon says that while the surgery went well and her follow up tests show that she is progressing well there is still the chance that she may have a stroke as a side effect of the brain surgery. With this type of injury the brain can suffer visal spasms (not sure of the spelling) which can trigger a stroke. This can happen for up to two weeks after the surgery so we're not out of the woods yet. many of the other patients in the ward have had just that experience but so far we're three days past the operation and no stroke yet.
While she was talking and recognized both my brother and I right after the surgery, she has been more heavily sedated for the last couple days as she was getting agitated (imagine Jill doing that) and they were afraid that she would hurt herself while she was thrashing about in the bed. She has been quite a handful for the nurses, but the good news so far is that she seems to be able to move everything although further testing will be needed to determine if she has lost any motor control. Compared to the other patients I see in the same ward her ongoing movements give us hope (although she's moving so much they have had to restrain her). She even went so far as to pull out the arterial IV in her arm! She certainly seems to be fighting this thing, but we're not sure what path her recovery is going to take yet.
I'm going to cross post this to the other thread about flowers for her so all should be able to get the latest update. If you are interested in further info, email me and I'll send you my cell number.
Thanks for all the support. Her Flyertalk friends are very important to her and I'm sure she'll be blown away when she hears what you folks have been up to.
John MacDonald aka: jmxcpter
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A man's got to know
his limitations