Stroke Survivor Blog

Steve appears to be responding to the new antibiotic. His eyes aren’t as red, but he’s not out of the woods yet. He says he feels better, but it’s still difficult for him to swallow, chew or even breathe through his nose. His face was still swollen when I left him at 8:30 tonight. This is making it very hard for him to get the nutrition he needs and we don’t want him to be put back on a feeding tube. So in addition to everything else, we would appreciate your prayers to target that need specifically. Even the inside of his mouth and lips are so swollen that they’re starting to crack. And he keeps biting on the inside of the left cheek because he can’t feel it. But I can tell that he is doing better when he does eat because he’s learning to close the left side of his mouth so the food won’t leak out.

It is possible that he got the infection from having the feeding tube in so long, but they’re not sure. We’re still waiting for the results of the culture and they’ve been drawing blood every day to check it for anything else.

In spite of all his misery, he still did well in therapy and they got him up walking twice today. His muscles need to be worked every day to retrain the brain to move them automatically…like teaching a baby to walk.

He is still in very good humor but very sleepy. When he woke up this morning he thought he was home in bed because the IV pump was beeping and it sounded like our alarm clock.

All of the rehab staff have been wonderful and they bend over backwards for us. And I’m so glad we have insurance that is covering all of this. The bill must be in the hundreds of thousands by now. Steve has to maintain a minimum of 3 hrs. of therapy a day and show progress in achieving the goals they set in order for Medicare to continue to pay for it. As long as he shows progress, they will pay. And we have an Anthem BlueCross Medi-gap policy that covers the 20% that Medicare doesn’t pay, and they do take into consideration that he is very sick right now.

We so appreciate all your prayers and Steve has been especially blessed by those who have come up to pray for him. Your prayers are like a lifeline to us because both of us have incredible peace. Thank you so much.

Love, Kathy