Ruth Mann Recovers

 Wednesday, October 29, 2025 Ruth is back in the saddle Even though the CT, the MRI, and the EKG negated the diagnosis of a blood clot-based stroke during the weekend of October 11th, Ruth’s stroke-like symptoms indicate that she had a stroke of some kind that was intense in the beginning but left no scarring on her brain or heart. Whatever it was, we praise God that Ruth is back. “Recovered” is relative In her case, “recovered” is a relative term. She has regained most of her gross and fine motor skills, her memory and her speech. She can walk unaided, answer simple and complex questions, speak fluently, and both recall her degree of self-awareness that fateful day when she could not understand why her husband and nine children surrounded her in tears when she failed to recall their names or identity. Her signature and hand writing have not quite returned to their former elegance and fluency (she had lovely hand writing), but it’s clearly legible and still better than most...

Ruth and I participated in the Colson Fellows program last year from August of 2024 through May of 2025, and then we were  commissioned at the Colson Center's annual conference in Louisville in June. During this time, we were members of a cohort of adults studying the attributes and benefits of biblical worldview formation and were inspired to subsequently launch a home school cooperative which became Wisdom Builders .  In the course of writing the letter this morning, the activity took on a self-therapy function as I processed some recent history and broader reflection. Plus, I shared some aspects of Ruth's recovery that I don't think I've mentioned in previous posts to this blog, so I'm posting this letter for any blessing or insight it might provide to Ruth's family and friends.  Ruth continues to recover well. She's walking better, talking better, and irritated that I keep waking up in the morning with the same battery of tests: Name, Rank, Serial Numb...

At home. 4:34 pm Day 6 of Ruth’s recovery. Ruth can now text on her phone, though not as fluently. She still can’t muster the dexterity to write a pen, and can’t sign her name. She can’t type on a keyboard. She can walk independently but she’s slow and stiffer than she thinks or realizes. Her facial emotions are not completely restored, but much better. This was perhaps the scariest part of her initial condition, because as we occasionally mourned and cried with her, her facial reaction was blank and perplexed as if to ask, “What is wrong with you people?” Yesterday and today, she successfully recalled the names of all nine children, though it was work and delayed. This is a stark contrast in the past; in recent years when we have a reunion as a family for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, we have a contest about who can most quickly recite “Lydia, Peter, Micah, Gretchen, Colette, Jonas, John Michael, Dietrich, Calvin.” (I seem to recall that John Michael has the record at ...

 Ruth is having conversations that are usually intelligible but sometimes halted and interrupted. She’s scoring better in I’m calling the “Obvious Test” like questions about name, address, etc., but still gets to a point of being overwhelmed and demurring, “I don’t know.”  She can walk without assistance, though very stiff and would not do well in an environment where she could get bumped.  She showered and used the bathroom partly independently, but needed some of my help.  It’s too early to claim that I see a pattern here, but she was fresher this morning than she is in the afternoon/evening.  She clearly understands that we’re leaving in about 15 minutes to pick up Dietrich who spent the weekend in northern Michigan at a church youth group retreat and was spared much of the turmoil, and fortunately so.  Ruth needed some time to re-learn how to manage the touch pad on her laptop, but still can’t figure out keystrokes. She can’t type and can’t write letter...

11:26 am Ruth returned home yesterday afternoon and the reunion with the kids was both happy and scary. She didn't recognize them for the most part, with some bright spots of small success. All her answers were hit and miss, and usually misses -- today's date, where/what building she's in, is it morning or evening, who is the president (please no barbs), what city she is in, etc.  She usually begins her reply with a few filler words like, "Well, you know, um...." and then resigns to "I don't know" and wrinkles her brow with a kind of "oh-well" resignation and shoulder shrug.  With assistance, she walked downstairs and laid down in a couch and took a long nap. Later in the early evening, she went upstairs to our bed. She detoured into Jonas' room and sat down on the floor and incessantly fidgeted with her shirt, and she does this a lot. In the hospital, she was always taking her gown off and getting confused when I came over to put it ba...

Sunday, October 12, 2025. 9:54 am I slept at home last night and Lydia took a turn overnighting with Ruth. Lydia picked me up and brought me to the hospital this morning.  After I greeted Ruth, she responded to some simple questions with full sentence answers, and they were substantially accurate. The doctors believe that all this indicates that she is recovering and this eliminates the relevance or need for a Lumbar Puncture. Additionally, Ruth is now asking questions – stuttered, partial, imperfect questions – about her environment and we’re very encouraged. Ruth will be discharged today! We’ll begin outpatient therapy this week.  Lydia is moving back into the house this week to help care for Ruth and care for the house. I might just have her run the Mann Family Academy; how poetic for an alum returning to her alma mater!   😀😁😂😃😄😅😆😉😊😋😍

  Home at Fort Wayne, IN Saturday, October 11, 2025, 10:11 pm Friends and Family: Ruth is staying one more night to undergo a procedure that will more definitively rule out the possibility that Ruth suffered a stroke. The procure is called a Lumbar Puncture, which is described by AI below. The Lumbar Puncture is what Ruth has received when she delivered babies – its an epidural, only this time the objective is not to shoot pain-killers into her system, but to sample the fluid to study evidence of a stroke. Ruth will get the LP around 10:00 am tomorrow morning, Sunday. Assuming this proves what we suspect is the case – that Ruth did not experience a stroke Friday morning – then we’ll likely pack her bags and bring her home. The next decision, then, is to pick a therapy plan. Plan A is starting a schedule of taking Ruth to therapy appointments until she recovers. Plan B is to enroll her in an inpatient solution where she stays at a dedicated recovery facility to receive int...

  Parkview Regional Hospital Fort Wayne, IN Saturday, October 11, 2025, 10:30 am Friends and Family: Yesterday morning Ruth seemed to me loopy and unengaged. After failing some basic questions like today’s date, etc., I drove her to Parkview hospital where the doctors immediately performed a CT scan that reported no problems and then scheduled her for various tests through the rest of the day, including an EKG and MRI, which reported the same. This morning her neurologist delivered the good news that Ruth has no organic problem. That is, there is nothing wrong with her heart, her brain, or her body. There has been no stroke. There is no pill or therapy that the hospital can administer to help her condition, so they will discharge her after a shower and a change of clothes. At this point, doctors believe that Ruth suffered yesterday morning an episode of Transient Global Amnesia, which is something of a catch-all diagnosis of amnesia and some degree of aphasia. Doctors say...