Daily update

Hi Everyone,

We spoke to a very nice doctor who sat down with us to explain the current situation. Here's the summary that he gave us:

1) He had a Hemmoragic stroke (a bleed) which is where blood leaks into the brain. He cannot be on any blood thinners like Cumadin (aka Warfarin) while this bleed exists.
2) Because he has an irregular heart beat, when they took him off the blood thinners, he developed a clot which lodged in his brain. This is called an Ischemic stroke.

The stroke evolves from day to day, so it is impossible to say how much of Pop is affected until months from now.

He also noticed that Pop was not on a statin, which was odd considering his heart condition coupled with his diabetes. He will put Pop on one after he is able to swallow again.

Right now, he's not able to coordinate his muscles to swallow.

When I saw him today, we took Ben in to visit and he seemed to respond the most to him being there. He made audible grunts, which was more than he was doing last night, but his eyes were closed. He understood what we were saying and was able to nod his head "yes" and even shrug to respond to our "yes or no" questions. The muscles in his mouth are not coordinated very well.

Like I said, the doctor was saying that the good news is that he could recover a great deal over the course of 3 months. The bad news is that he's going to have good days and bad days and some of those bad days can scare the family into fearing the worst. It's important to never give up hope and like we keep saying, to live one day at a time.

As always, I'll keep you posted with any updates.

Jason