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KipW · Joined: 08 Mar 2009 Posts: 4

This is from rec.arts.sf.fandom, posted by Keith Lynch. I have trimmed the message slightly, but the original can be seen in the thread "Marilee Layman is in the hospital" at 5:19 pm. Keith was visiting his mother at the same time, as will quickly become apparent:

I visited Marilee Layman in Fairfax Hospital this afternoon. She's in
room seven of the Neuroscience ICU, which is on the second floor, up
the first stairway you encounter if you walk from the main information
desk toward the cancer ward. Each time I came to the ICU door, they'd
tell me she was undergoing a minor procedure and I should come back in
a few minutes. When they finally let me in, they praised me for my
patience. Little did they realize I was actually time-slicing with my
mother, who is a patient in a different ICU on a different floor in a
different wing of the same hospital. If my mother was still asleep,
and neither my brother nor the doctor was present to chat with, I saw
little point in hanging around her room.

I did spend a few minutes in a waiting room with nobody else in it. I
cycled through the channels available on the cable TV, and found one
of the Harry Potter movies. The sound and picture were more than a
full second out of sync, which made it unwatchable.

On one of my excursions back and forth, I saw my brother at the main
information desk, so I led him to our mother's room, and we sat in
there for about an hour, during which our mother woke up but wasn't
able to say much due to the fighter-pilot-style oxygen mask they had
her wearing. We were required to wear disposable gowns and gloves
while in her room, but not masks.

After that I was finally allowed into the Neuroscience ICU and
Marilee's room. I wasn't required to wear a gown or gloves, unlike
in my mother's room.

Marilee seems to have forgotten 99% of all English words. She is
alert, she recognized me, and she has no speech defect and no errors
in grammar unless you count abandoning sentences partway through and
starting over, but she struggles to find words to express even the
simplest concepts. Prompting her with the word she's probably looking
for doesn't help. It's very much like you or I trying to communicate
in a language we know only a few words of.

Since all she did was lie in bed and talk, I couldn't tell if she has
any non-verbal deficits. I asked her if she plays the piano. She
answered that she didn't know. But it's not clear to me whether
that's just because she doesn't know the word "piano." Perhaps if she
was seated at one she'd instantly know whether she can play it or not,
and similarly with other non-verbal skills such as riding a bicycle or
cooking a meal.

When a nurse asked her if she liked tea, she also said she didn't
know, even though the nurse was showing her the tea. But the tea
wasn't in a standard teacup, but in a hospital-style container that
could have contained anything. On trying it, she apparently decided
she did like it.

It would be interesting to see if she can communicate by drawing
pictures of what she means, or pointing to drawings made by others.
If so, then she's the ideal user of graphical user interfaces.

She was obviously frustrated, being very much a verbal person, as I
am. (The two of us have posted over 45,000 messages here on rasff,
more than any other two people.)

I told her the names of some of her well-wishers, but I'm not sure if
she recognized the names, or whether they went the same place as the
rest of her vocabulary. But she certainly recognized me, even though
we've only seen each other at one or two cons a year. And since she
cut back to only attending Minicon, not even that, as I've never been
to that con. So I'm sure she'd recognize anyone she knows, even if
she can't put a name to the face.

It's only been three days, so major improvements are still possible.
Worst case, she could simply relearn all the words.

She doesn't look sick. Anyone who visits hospitals soon realizes that
many patients have a very unwell look about them. My mother certainly
does, unfortunately. No medical show on TV has ever quite captured it
-- TV patients all look too healthy.

People with brain problems often have a strange or absent stare,
but Marilee looked perfectly normal. She faced me and looked at me
just as a healthy person would. Her gaze was somewhat intense and
unwavering, but that might just be because I was a familiar person
in unfamiliar surroundings.

After about half an hour I was chased out so the nurses could do yet
another minor procedure.

No more than two people at a time are allowed into her room. Any cell
phones must be turned off. Since you are likely to be made to wait,
bring a book.

I intend to visit again, next weekend or perhaps earlier. By then I
hope both my mother and Marilee will be out of their respective ICUs
and in the general wards.

_________________
Kip Williams
Down with smileys!

Janet K · Guest

Thanks, Kip, for posting Keith's report about his hospital visit. Via Google the rec.art.sf.fandom thread about Marilee can be read here.

I hope to visit her again on Wednesday afternoon.

dd-b · Guest

Thanks for reposting that here, Kip!