I remained in ER while tests were done, a Ct scan followed by an MRI and the results evaluated. My condition continued to wrosen. Mike was told I probably would not survive and that because of the location of the bleed any surgery would do "more harm than good". So, I was transferred to ICU where the bleed continued for another day and a half and then stopped all by itself. And I still lived. On the 4th day Mike was told the bleeding had stopped sometime the day before, no new bleeding had since occurred and my condition was stabliized in fact improving slightly. I remained in ICU another day and then was transferred to what is called here a Step-Down Unit which is for patients requiring more care and closer monitoring than regular nursing floor but less than ICU. I spent a couple of days there before transfer to a regular nursing floor. Still Unconscious. I am told I regained consciousnes while on the nursing floor but I was in and out, if you know what I mean. An evaluation for admission to the hospital's acute rehab wing was done.

I am so sorry for all that Mike went through during this time. He was spending his nights at the old house in order to be nearer the hospital just in case. It was just a couple of miles from the hospital but only had the bare necessities. He spent every waking hour at the hospital, worrying, even when I was in ICU and he could only see me four times a day for 15 minutes. Then my Doctor gave him the most dreaded news of all, using words like "I don't even know if she will ever even have another coherrent thought" and "nursing home".

So, Mike made arrangements for my transfer to a nursing home near the hospital.

It was the same one he had chosen for his mother near the end of her life when

her care had just gotten to be too much for us. We found the care there had been very good, they were good about notifying us if anything unusual occurred, she would have been well fed if she hadn't refused to eat and the therapists really tried to get her to do the exercises regularly even though she always refused.

It didn't even have that "nursing home" smell. I would have made the same choice.

At this point I was unable to speak or swallow, I had lost all use of my entire right side. I had no response to painful stimuli on my right side. I was still being fed by IV and still had a catheter. Cognitive and vision problems were still to be discovered. As for my mental state, who knows?, I was awake but "absent". I could not sit up or turn over.

Warning: Do not use anything said here as a plan of action, treatment model or plan without first discussing it with your Doctor. I am herein only describing what has happened to me and what has been helpful to me personally.

Mike said the more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that they weren't even giving me a chance. So, next morning when my Doctor came to see me, Mike told him bluntly that he wasn't ready to give up on me just yet and demanded a transfer to Acute Rehab. A transfer order was issued and I was transferred there the next day. I remember that transfer and more and more of each day that passed afterward. But the memories are somehow different from other memories from before. It's almost as if they happened to someone else.

As if I don't remember the actual happening, just the fact it happened.

The catheter was removed. A feeding tube called a PEG tube was surgically implanted thru my belly into my stomach.

I remember my first real shower REALLY well because it was given by a MAN. He was the Therapist Supervisor, and since I was such a poor Acute Rehab candidate

in the first place, I guess he gave the first one in order to assess the hospital's liability if I were allowed to continue. I wasn't easily embarrassed before, but I would have/should have been. I just just didn't even have sense enough to be embarrassed at the time.

A Speech Therapist came by every day, and every day she swabed the back of my

throat trying to induce a gag reflex until at last...Success.. She had been also

giving me somthing she called "Lemon Ice". It was dark yellow and tasted of sweet lemons. It wasn't as hard as real ice but not as soft as sherbet. At least it was something I could chew and tasted good and I was thankful. She wasn't there however to hear my first words. One morning as I was being pushed, in my wheelchair, past the nurses station on my way to get a shower, I said "Good morning, Ladies" and everything suddenly seemed to stop. It seemed very quiet to me and my occupational therapist asked "Did You say something?" When I repeated it, I was treated to applause and a big hug. It was the first thing they had heard me say since coming to the unit about 3 weeks before. It had been so natural for me to say something the first time that I didn't realize how much trouble I would later have in "finding" the right words". When my Speech Therapist came that day, she already knew I had spoken. She told me to just keep on talking, it didn't matter if the words were the right ones, that we would worry about that later. The more I talked, the more my speech improved. I had long pauses in my speech while my brain was searching for the wanted word and I guess not finding it substituted another of similar meaning. I had a rather large vocabulary from working many crossword puzzles. It seemed I always used a bigger, more complicated word when another much smaller, much simpler one would have served the purpose better. I had a great deal of trouble with abstract words or expressions of ideas, like faith, liberty, professional. I seemed often, in the beginning, to sort of get stuck on one word, "Morgan". I repeated it over and over again. I have searched and searched my brain for anything related and the omly things I can come up with are 1)last name of a co-worker more years ago than I care to count and about whom I can recall little except that he was a royal pain...2)Dennis Morgan, Old time movie star, pirate movies,used to be one of my favorites but haven't seen one in years. Guess I'll never know why I did that. If you asked me a yes or no question, I would both answer aloud and shake my head at the same time, not always indicating agreement of what my mouth was saying and what my head shaking was saying. Mike quickly learned to rephrase his questions or to repeat back to me what he had understood my choice to be. It was usually what I said aloud that I meant.

About the time that my gag reflex returned, I was sent for a swallowing test. The results were borderline. My Speech Therapist said I if I promised to follow her instructions faithfully and if I could eat it and keep it down she would order me something. All I had to do was swallow twice after every bite! Yeah REAL FOOD!! A biscuit with the crust removed drowned in gravy, She went to the kitchen herself to get it for me and fed it to me. To me it tasted soooo gooood... And I did so well that she slowly allowed me to return to a soft diet with some restrictions....While I was making all this fantastic progress in the Speech/Swallow Department, elsewhere progress almost did not exist.