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Any experience with stroke and very low platelets?
Pancreatic Cancer | Last Active: Jun 9, 2024 | Replies (5)Comment receiving replies
Yes, spoke to the onco with her on a teleconference call. My fears justified without any real solutions. Waiting for platelet resolution before any blood thinners. In the meantime, off oral capecitabine, off metformin due to kidney insult, CEA seems to be trending upwards. I mentioned this to her onco prior to them joining the meeting. His only reply was, "Well we will be watching that." Seriously?????
I am an NP so I know the chance of her having another (larger) stroke is high. There is notable aphasia as well as mild left sided eyelid ptosis since the initial scan indicated several areas of infarcts on the rt as well as left (Broca's area = affects speech). I spent a month with her and her partner but now back home 2,000 miles away.
She has labs and MRI/CT scheduled for next week. Not sure how this will play out at this time.
Thank you for your response and my best of luck to everyone.
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In my mom's battle with thymoma --> myasthenia gravis --> glioblastoma, I remember all the frustration with eyelid ptosis (MG) and then aphasia when the brain tumor (and surgery) affected her Broca's area.
I don't have any useful medical information to share, unfortunately... but was just thinking about the aphasia part. Part of her post-stroke treatment should include speech therapy, and if they haven't offered it (sometimes slips through the cracks), be sure to request (demand) it.
As part of that, ask the speech therapists and neurologists if they have any kind of devices (e.g., tablets and software) that can help with communication. If not, maybe there is a protocol or "language" that can be mastered which reduces the errors in communication. In dealing with brain damage in that area, you can't always be sure the patient understood your question, or did understand it and simply replied with the wrong word(s). Some way of asking the same question twice in different ways, or getting a confirmatory answer with eyes blinking, finger movements, etc seems logical. I have no idea if there are standards addressing that, but I would expect anything in that space to be more successful if you start early.
FWIW, a book called "The Brain That Changes Itself" (Norman Doidge, M.D., 2007) had several interesting takes on post-stroke therapy. Many other do as well, but this one was understandable by a layman like myself. https://www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Changes-Itself-Frontiers/dp/0143113100