Saturday, 11 July 2009

Pictures on the wall


We went to A&E today as Jo had some spontaneous bruising on her right arm and a swollen and painful index finger, possibly warning signs that she was taking too much warfarin. Her INR came back as 2.4, possibly a tad too high and the doctor advised Jo to stop taking aspirin.

Whilst wheeling Jo along the corridor to A&E I drew her attention to the pictures of the old fishing village on the wall to the left of us. I had often done this last year, when Jo was in the neurological ward, in an attempt to ascertain how her hemispatial neglect was faring. Initially she would keep her head turned stubbornly to the right and ask "What pictures?". Later on, and with some effort, Jo would turn her head to the left but fail to comment on the pictures.

Today she did not even turn her head to the left but commented that they were lovely pictures. When I pointed out that she could not see them last year she admitted that in the later stages she could see them but could not discern what the pictures were of as they were just a blur. The fact she did not have to turn her head demonstrates that objects on her left are not only perceivable by her, they are visible in her peripheral space.
Posted by Unknown at 08:48

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Different strokes...

It has been nearly seven years since Jo suffered a "controlled" stroke whilst undergoing brain surgery to clip the blood vessel that had caused a subarachnoid haemorrhage in 2000. Sadly two successive coilings did not occlude the bleed and so Jo had a craniotomy in August 2008. During surgery the surgeon discovered the coiling had penetrated the rear of the aneurysm, occasioning emergency repair procedures. Consequentially they spent one and a half hours longer in surgery than expected, leading to the right half of Jo's brain forgetting it has to look after the left side of her world.