Friday April 20th

I had a follow up appointment today with my doctor from Good Sam, the rehab hospital where I was for a month.

We discussed the results from the angiogram done on Wed with the neurologist from Harborview (the first hospital where I was the first 10 days). .

Basically he said to consider it was good that the results were mxed as good/bad. Good they didn't find anything and bad that they didn't find anything.

We discussed that only 10% of strokes are hemmorhagic. And that the cause of most of those are due to hypertension. Sometimes, the cause is unknown, such as mine.

Since I don't have any of the other high risk factors such as diabetes or high cholesterol, I don't do drugs or take drugs etc... they don't know what to attribute the cause of the stroke to.

Meanwhile, he said to keep all stroke risk factors under control to minimize my risks of having another stroke. At this point, hypertension would be considered by me my greatest risk. Although i have been watching my blood pressure and it has been normal. Now to keep it that way.

He also explained that the most dangerous timeframe for someone to have another stroke is the first 30 days. That explains why he kept me in the hospital for a month. Even though I survived the first 30 days, I'm not off the hook for having another one. He said anyone could have another stroke but keeping risk factors under control would reduce my chances.

But he did feel that it was a malformed blood vessel that was in simple terms a ticking timebomb. It could have bled at anytime. The angiogram they did on Wed was to focus on the other blood vessels and look for any others that are potentially malformed. Since they couldn't finf any, that is what they considered good/bad. The doctor and I agreed to look at that as good.

Without giving a certain diagnosis, he felt that with things under control, I would have a less than 1% chance of another one.

That being said, he said just like the neurologist, go home, focus on rehab, keep risks under control and have a good life.

On a sidenote, his brother suffered from a hemmoraghic stroke last month. He bled twice more and passed away last week.

I'd say I am doing quite well. I am focusing on walking without a cane soon. I can do this, but I want to focus on "form" and good "gait". So time is ticking....I'll be ready by July....because I'm determined to.