Update: 03/31/06

Medications:

330 mg. Oral Morphine (11 doses).

12 drops Atropine (4 doses).

5 mg. Oral Lorazepam in 7 doses (for sleeping/anxiety).

Morning SAT: Oxygen Saturation = 94/Heart rate = 101 (sitting).

How Joann’s Day Went:

Having thought about it for several hours, I still haven’t come up with a good way to describe Joann’s day. So, I’ll just spit it out. Early this morning, sometime between midnight and 5:00 AM, Joann had a stroke. A big one too, apparently. Notice the medication changes above, and you’ll see that she is on a liquid medication regimen. She can’t swallow pills anymore, eat, drink, and all the other things that define the divide between functional and nonfunctional. This too is a natural progression of her disease, although she went from relatively sufficient to completely dependent much quicker than I would have suspected. Or, anyone else either, for that matter. Her nurses were genuinely shocked at the rapidity of Joann’s decline. Meanwhile, I’m learning new ways to take care of her at home.