Update on 12-20

I saw Susan yesterday. She already seems so much better: her speech is normal (not slow and slightly slurred), even though she tells me that her phenobarbital level is still around 55. She is able to walk without assistance, but is wobbly and ataxic and needs to be guarded. Her gait gets better when she patches one eye. She doesn't use a walker.

She had some twitches of her right hand, which she had some voluntary control over. In the past, she's had twitches there (in the thumb) which were thought to be seizures. She is also occasionally seeing colored lights that don't exist in her far right field of vision, which are transient and last a few seconds. I wonder if these could be seizures, but I just read that phenobarbital can cause visual hallucinations as well as anterograde anmesia. So, maybe it's just the phenobarbital. 

I have suggested acupuncture, and gave her the name and number of an acupuncturist, in case they don't have acupuncture at Spaulding.  That may help her body and brain heal itself more quickly. 

She is doing cognitive therapy with playing cards, including some numerical challenges which were -- challenging. Her memory seems better but she has some trouble still with short-term or "working" memory still and this is upsetting to her. She seems to know unchanging things like medical facts just fine.  For therapy yesterday, they had her bake chocolate chip cookies. They were good!!

Her appetite is picking up and she's often very hungry. She is very thin. When she arrived at Spaulding she weighed just 99 pounds, and she is 5'5".