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Hello!

I’ve talked to few of you on the phone, but just to fill in everybody on how I’m doing …

Every day, my walking improves.  As soon as I’m able to turn around, I’m determined to head back home.

Joke.  I’m fully home.  The hospital provided me with a cane when I was discharged Monday, and I still need it but just when I’m getting tired at the end of the day.  Otherwise, I can pretty much walk around un-assisted, but with a kinda lope, which you probably wouldn’t notice, but feels like a twitch feels – really noticeable.

Going up stairs is okay, although I use the handrails.  Downstairs is not so whippy … I don’t know why, exactly.  I take real precise care and go mostly one step at a time, again especially when I’m tired.  Somehow, I keep ending up on the upper level.

Getting up and down from the sofa is hard, but then I’ve always been weak at that.

My speech is fine now, I think.  Karen’s joy is muted on this one.

My right arm is weak, and the use of my hand is still clumsy.  I notice my typing on the computer is getting a little better, though.  I spend time squeezing silly putty to strengthen things up.

In the hospital, I had an “echocardiogram,” sort of an ultrasound of the heart.  The doctor there prescribed a follow-up TEE (trans-esophageal electrocardiogram), which is the same thing, but from the other side.  The other side, unfortunately, is the inside, so I had to swallow the  probe and the cable it was attached to.  The exam went fine (gag me with an ultrasound!), but revealed a gap in  the partition between the arterial and venous atria.  This hole apparently exists in everyone at birth, sort of like the fontanel, the soft spot on baby’s head.  And like the fontanel, it supposedly soon closes up; apparently mine never did.

The veins apparently scour little clots from everyone’s system in the normal course of doing business, carrying them to the lungs where they’re filtered out of the blood.  In my case, the hole in the heart wall allows the clots to leak over to the arterial side, and thus into the capillaries’ supply side.  In my case, also partly due to an under-sized artery in the brain, a clot lodged there, resulting in the minor stoke I had.

I’m taking a blood thinning medication, now, so I’m not at immediate risk.  But I have a scheduled meeting with a pediatric cardiologist to see about fixing the hole.  They tell me it’s a pediatrician because they’re the ones who generally deal with this condition, but I think it’s because they just think I’m acting childishly.

Anyway, more than you wanted to know, probably, but it’s what happening to me these days.  I had to drop out of teaching classes at the community college, but I have an opportunity to work on an interesting project in Woodland Park, a nearby mountain community.  We’re going up to Portland in a couple of weeks, and I’m feeling better every day, so life is good, all things considered.

Thanks, everybody, for your care and concern.  I’ll keep you posted if anything new and exciting comes up.

Love,

Mike Riley

Hello, Everybody!

Well, I was dreaming along peacefully, when all of a sudden, I had this weird dream that my arms and legs were flailing around by themselves.  Then I realized that I was awake.

I tried to get out of bed, and my legs just kinda gave way below me.

Poor Karen.  She is often wakened from a sound sleep by me hollering something … one time, it was “I kill!” in a deep, scary voice … and is always ready to help wake me up and settle down.  Friday night (Saturday morning early, actually, and thankfully, cause it would have been too weird to be on Friday the 13^th!) she couldn’t wake me up.  I was fully awake, retching uncontrollably on my knees at the foot of the bed.  She’s a champ!  At first, she consoled me, and I thought maybe it was just something I ate.  But it only got worse, and we finally agreed to call 911.

That sounds so calm.  In actuality, I was flailing around, dry-heaving, and engaging in other picturesque and romantic behaviors, while she was running around trying to help me.  After what seemed like a long time, I could hear the fire engine coming over the sound of my own thrashings.

The nice firepeople (politically correct, maybe, but that sounds like some sort of superheroes, doesn’t it?) asked me if I could stand up, and walk to the ambulance.  I would laugh, but I can’t breathe so good.  So, that answer would be “no.”  So, the EMT’s and the ambulance crew (comprising 7 hale and hearty young men and women) pushed me down onto the carry-tarp thingie (me still barfy), and carried me down the hall, down the stairs (breaking the handrail in the process), through the living room, down the front stairs, to the waiting ambulance.

I love ambulances!  They have cool lights, a nice exhaust note, and they’re full of diverting chemicals.  The nice ambulance attendant (a guy, rats!) started an IV (that’s eye-vee, not “four”), then put in something which stopped my dizziness, and thus my throwing up, and a strong dose of Valium.  Whoa!  E-ticket ride!!

By the time we reached the hospital, I was still feeling pain, but actually starting to like it!  After some diagnostic tests (I can’t quite remember them), it was determined that I had had a little stroke!  Actually I had guessed that that was the case, before the ambulance came, and told Karen “Ahh fing ahhve hab a stoe!”  Ask her!  She’ll tell you!

Saturday was mostly a sleep-around-the-clock day, but I did wake up in time to get another MRI and see the Broncos whip the Patriots (yay!)  One has to have one’s priorities.  By  Sunday AM, I felt pretty good.  A little dizzy, and very weak on my right side, and still talking like I’ve been chewing on ice.  I’m getting a little better, but I’ve got some PT scheduled later this week.  MRI and echocardiogram (cost-saving tip: the ones with shorter names cost more) show a healthy heart and generally clear arteries, but a congenitally constricted artery (normally about the size of dental floss … how the heck could they tell it was too small?) to my brain.  Luckily, not a part that I use much.

So, here I sit at home, weak as a kitten (normal), tired and confused (again normal), and with limited control of my right arm, leg and tongue-edge (normal only when drinking heavily.)  It is remarkably hard to type, even using my typical hunt-and-peck method.  I can walk with a cane, navigate stairs (once the stair rails are replaced), and feed, dress, and wash myself.  I had to forgo teaching classes at PPCC this semester, because I can neither drive nor stand up for very long yet.  I’m excited to get on with getting back to my full range of relaxation and loafing activities.  I’m taking Plavix now, even though I just about insisted on the purple pill.  The doctor said the purple pill is for something else all together.  Oh, well.

Best of all, the doc said we can still go to Portland on the 2^nd of February to check up on Ben’s progress!  Oh, yeah, and visit Aaron and Morgan, too.

Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.  I’ll keep you posted if anything else interesting comes up or goes down.

Love, Mike Riley