from: Alexis Vigo
to: (omitted)
date: Dec 25, 2006 7:49 PM
subject: of past and present medical problems
You know, my intellectual curiosity has been stiffled. I recently asked my dad about my grandpa’s MRI and CT scans. He has no clue where they are. This blows.
And now to segue onto the actual purpose of this email, my grandma (on my mom’s side) died of a stroke back in 1997, but I didn’t find out about all the details until a few days ago when we went to visit my grand-aunt, my grandma’s sister. Just to be clear, I’m telling you about this ’cause you’re one of the few medically inclined people I know, so you’ll appreciate what I have to say about it.
My grandma died on April 12th. Two weeks before, on Good Friday, we were all in church. Apparently my grandma saw something that startled her to the point that she squeezed my mom’s hand prety hard. She later told my grand-aunt by phone she saw something. My grand-aunt couldn’t specify.
The two weeks pass. My grandma was feeling really sick, so my mom took her to the hospital. While in the emergency room, she had a cup of coffee. About half an hour later she had her stroke.
All of those details set off some alarms in my mind, so I started asking questions. What did my grandma say she saw? Again, neither my grand-aunt nor my mom could specify. Was the hand squeezing voluntary or uncontrolled? My mom said she was prety sure my grandma did it on purpose. As I keep at it, I find out that at hospital, after having her coffee, my grandma started complaining about a really bad headache and said to call the doctor. There was a point in which it seemed she wasnt understanding anything anyone was saying, and then later on she couldn’t speak, only mumble incoherently. Finally, she couldn’t move at all, going unconscious.
My best guess here is that she had a massive bilateral stroke that cut off blood flow to the left hemisphere first (language). The thing is, I think she had a mini-stroke during Good Friday two weeks before, either to the amygdala (fear) or the occipital lobe (sight).
My intellectual curiosity is killing me right now, but I don’t think I can ask my mom any more questions. I don’t want her getting sad or anything reliving the last moments with my grandma. Right now I feel maybe if grandma had gone on blood thinners sooner, she could have lived a little longer. It’s weird trying to make sense out of this nine years after the fact.
Anyway, thanks for letting me empty my thoughts on you.
-alex
Further information would be of much help here but according to what you say it is possible that your grandma suffered an embolic stroke of the posterior (left) cerebral artery; this would justify the Good Friday incident as an initial occlusion / bleeding of the artery (producing an episode of visual hallucinations) that later on, as the emboli progresses, affects a more ample (anterior) cerebral territory -with the result you have already described.
Hope this can ease your curiosity.
Sorry anyway.
(it would be too adventurous though to even think that had anyone suspected a cerebral stroke after the Good Friday episode anything would have changed)