We just had it confirmed that Herb did in fact have a stroke on last Thursday night. The neurologist came into Wythenshawe (an honour that shouldn’t be underestimated) to tell us herself and was super awesome about it: direct, polite, a real expert.

So me and Gem and Dr Internet (and a good deal of you too) had no doubt come to this conclusion days ago - but it was different to hear it actually confirmed: He will likely never have full control of his right arm/fingers again, and the extent that he can ‘rewire’ his own brain can’t be determined. There’s a sad little grey splodge of damaged tissue there in the left hemisphere that isn’t ever going to go anywhere.

The bright side - and there is one - is that the stroke took out only a small chunk of brain - and it looks to be pretty much all based in the part of the brain that tends to control - you guessed it - right arm movement. The prognosis seems to be that we lost an arm but we didn’t lose any of the Herb that *really* matters. Arms-schmarms, I say.

Losing one’s mind - the essential core of who you are - is something that I’ve always had a peculiar dread of. I’ve had nightmares for three nights now about Herb not knowing who I was or just being wiped clean and, late on Thursday when his fever peaked again and he just blipped away for a second - literally just wasn’t there anymore - is a moment that will live in my memory for ever.

What I’m getting at is that when I heard the news my overwhelming feeling was one of relief. I’m still not sure if that’s a thing I want to explore more at the moment.

Anyroad up, the thing is that babies don’t get strokes all that often - and when they do there are three usual diagnoses:

1) That there’s an underlying condition in the heart, lungs, brain, blood or *something* that’s caused it

2) There’s evidence in the blood - ‘markers’ they call them, possibly, that the event was ‘transient’ in nature - in other words super unlikely to happen again

3) Everyone has to shrug their shoulders and just kind of go ‘Well that was weird.’

We’re way into investigating diagnosis 1 and so far there’s nothing. He’s having another MRI and lots more blood-work to investigate more over the next three to four days. I expect that most of the work will stop for the weekend though. I think from where I sit at the moment that I would prefer diagnosis 2 as the thought of 3 is pretty terrifying.

We’ll not be out of hospital until we’ve veered closer to one of the above. After that we’ll have to make some short term and possibly medium and long term decisions about what the fuck is going on - with him, life etc - but that hovers way in the distance; ominous but not insurmountable.

Here’s a thing also: The first thing I heard when Dr Hughes told me that my son and heir had had a stroke was a voice in my head that I immediately thought was my Grandma Ginny saying “Well, do you love him any less for all that?” Trite but true.

So finally, (finally!) thanks to everyone for the cards and the gifts and the incessant upbeat messages and support and all that jazz. Its really, really making a difference. I’ll be honest, there’s only so much emotional bandwidth that I’ve been able to give this situation: its been really nice to know that, once home from the hospital and having hung up the ‘strong husband’ jacket, I can check my emails, read the kind words that you’ve written and have a good cry. (Now I come to write that it makes it all sound like emotional pornography, but as I’m coming to realise over the last few days, the brain really is a funny fucker.)

The ‘too long; didn’t read’ version: The Boy Herb had a fire in his mind, had to give up some motor function in order to put it out but we will emerge victorious or I’m not the king of tattered defiance this evening.

Rambling now. Love you all. Joey