Beverly had her open heart surgery more than six weeks ago on May 18th. The hope was to be home about a week later and resume a normal life six weeks later. But when she woke up from her surgery, we realized that she had had a stroke during her surgery that affected the left side of her body. She spent about two weeks in ICU and stepdown ICU--even making a one day stay in inpatient rehab before having to return to stepdown ICU because her heart was acting up. Eventually she was ready to go back to rehab again even though she was having some issues with her heart there too. They just decided to keep her there and keep an eye on it. She had four weeks of intense occupational, physical and speech therapy--at least three hours a day. The goal was to get her to a point that she could go home.
It was a frightening and anxiety producing event for all of us but especially for her. She is so frightened of falling. She is unsteady enough that it is a real concern for all of us. And the thought of how much care she needs can be a little overwhelming at times even though she has made great strides in the time that she was in rehab. She needs 24 hour a day care so Chris is living with her and we spend a lot of time there helping her, cooking meals, etc. We did get an agency to come in one hour every morning to help her get bathed and dressed in the morning so that Chris doesn't have to do it. It is a big undertaking but hopefully she will continue to improve over the summer with more outpatient therapy so that she can get to the point that she doesn't need someone to be with her all the time. So it has been a long road for her just to get home and it will continue to be a long road to continue to improve but at the moment, she is just happy to be back in her own home.
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