August 27, 2012

Wow!

I stopped in before work today and got to see her neurosurgeon.  Gretchen wasn't very responsive but she was responsive enough that he wasn't concerned.  Looks like she will be getting a 4 vessel arteriogram in the next couple days to confirm there isn't an aneurism.  He did say that we should let Gretchen know when we arrive and if she wakes up try to interact with her.  She did wake a bit for me and tried to talk but couldn't get much out.

I learned why she couldn't speak much when I came back in the afternoon.  The speech pathologist arrived while we were there and did some cleaning of Gretchen's mouth.  warning, the next two sentences are a bit gross - but not nearly as gross as Peter's description (unless you are a fisherman) There was a lot of dead skin in her mouth but the real problem was some gunk in the back of her mouth.  I suspect it was drainage from her nose and don't see how she could breath around that glob let alone speak.

After a good mouth cleaning the speech pathologist took a small amount of water in a spoon and put it in Gretchen's mouth.  It was slow, but SHE SWALLOWED!!!!  The speech pathologist recommended that we interact with Gretchen as much as possible when she is awake, even if it is just looking at us or squeezing our hands.  Every little bit helps.  She also recommended encouraging Gretchen to sing, even if it is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  I guess I need to find all those pieces she loves to sing to and get them to her room.

Gretchen's parents visited her this evening and she was more alert and interactive than she had been in over a week.

All-in-all I think we hit another milestone today and re-hit the interaction milestone.  Now the real work begins...