John Begins to Correct Himself (by John)

Beloved of Christ:

It is early in the morning, or late at night, depending on your perspective on such things. But whichever it is, I wanted to send out a brief update on Joan.

Joan was tired today. She thoroughly enjoyed all the visits yesterday (and all the food!), and was sleepy today. She took several naps while I was at work, and went to bed before I got home. But she is slowly getting better.

One item of interest: It turns out that Joan's concussion and bleeding were all on her left side. When the neurosurgeon and I had first been talking about Joan's head injuries, we had been comparing the injuries in her head to what lead to my partial right temporal lobectomy in 2005, and I thought he was saying that the bleeding was on the same side of Joan's head as it had been on mine. But it was really the opposite, i.e. left, side. Joan also is going to show me the CT they did of her head (we have it on CD), and she says that it's the largest "small" bleed she has ever seen.

The bleeding on her left side (by the way, for those who know, it was a sub-arachnoid bleed) is what is causing the slow recovery from her short-term memory loss. The bleed was largely in the left temporal lobe, where a lot of the brain's memory storage resides, so damage to that area of the brain will affect the brain's ability to have short-term memory, and to translate the short-term into long-term memory. But as the bleed heals, so will her memory.

That's all for tonight. Thanks again for all the prayers and thoughts. Talk to you again tomorrow.

John.