Last February, my Grandmother was diagnosed with a rare degenerative neural disease called Moya Moya. What happens is the arteries in the brain get clogged so the brain creates new capillaries to transport the blood through the brain. There are only about 500 people who have ever gotten it. There is a surgeon at Stanford University who invented a bypass surgery to increase blood flow. In March my grandmother elected to have this surgery. I was really worried about the surgery but I thought that it would either work and she would be healthy or she would die, the thought of her being in a weird place, in between life and death never crossed my mind. The first surgery went fine but when they went back to do the other side she had a massive stroke. She was in a coma for about two months before she started regaining consciousness. While in the hospital she caught an antibiotic resistant STAPH infection called merca. The doctors were able to treat it and she survived. The hardest part about all of this was that it was all happening thousands of miles away on the other side of the country. I really didn't know if I was going to get to see her again alive.
Finally in June, it was decided that she should come back to the east coast to be closer to all of us. She was going to live at the Cedars Nursing Home. I was really excited to get to see her again. It was really hard to go and visit her because she had a trache in her throat and the Cedars reeked of urine. There was no light in the building and the other patients would moan and things like that all the time. It was a really horrible and dreary place.
Two weeks she transferred to Health South which is an acute rehab facility which basically means she will be getting much more intensive therapy. It is also a much more pleasant place than The Cedars. She also just got the trache taken out which is a good thing because now she could theoretically talk and eat solid food, neither of which she has done since March. When my brother or I walk into the room she always starts grinning and sometimes she even starts crying with joy and she laughs at my dad when his back is turned. She understands what is going on around her and she has thoughts but she can't communicate. She will sometimes follow commands like to raise her arm or things like that but not all the time. It is really hard for me to see the person whom I have travelled around the world with, slumped over and drooling. Her chances to walk or talk again are very slim but I have to keep praying for a miracle.
