How We Got Here
Updated: Jul 22, 2019
It was the fall of 2016. My mom had just come over to my house to see me and the kids. She was running errands and stopped by. She left about 2:00pm and everything was great. I got a call around 5:00. I answered the phone to my mom saying "Hi honey, I am ok but something happened." Another voice then came on the line and it was an EMT who told me that my mom was on the ground at her apartment complex and said she could t feel her arms and was slurring some speech and seemed a bit out of it. My mom was unable to tell them exactly what happened but they told me to meet them at the hospital. This was the day that changed everything for my mom and for me. She was fine and then she was not.
She was able to explain that she was standing at the refrigerator and suddenly her arms went numb and she slowly fell to the ground. She was able to smooch her way into the other room and get to her purse. She tried to find her phone so she could get help. She called out for an hour plus and nobody heard her. She finally called out "Sir" and her iPhone was able to call 911. It was honestly a miracle she was able to do this.
I got to the hospital where my mom was unable to move her legs or hands and arms much. They did tons of tests and we all thought maybe she had a stroke but nothing came back indicating any type of stroke or heart attack. She was in the hospital for a week or so and they kept giving her pain meds and doing tests but no doctors could figure out what happened to her. Doctors were finally able to say the thought she had something called spinal cord syndrome.
Spinal cord syndrome is something that causes you to lose feeling in your arms, legs and hands. It can often get better and in young people usually everything returns but when you are older and have other health issues it can be hard to get all feeling back. My mom was able to get her legs back somewhat but never gained all her feeling back in some areas and gained nothing back with her hands. She was then moved to a rehab facility for 4 weeks where she worked on using a walker and learning how to do things with hardly any use of her hands. My in depth education about rehab facilities, hospitals, senior care facilities and how the elderly are treated began here.
