My dad had a clot. It starved parts of his brain for oxygen, so those brain-cells died. Had they given blood thinning medicine his recovery might have been better.
But, they did the scan, and then we had to wait a couple of days for the scans to be interpreted. By then it was too late.
My dad was 74 and I was pregnant with our first at the time. My mum chose to have their home adapted for a disabled wheel chair user, as she could not bring her self to even think about a nursing home. She would not hear of it, insisting to be his carer. She had the toilet rebuilt, got special adaptations to their bedroom, got a lift installed to the first floor balcony (Norwegian homes usually have the main living quarters on the first floor) so he could come in and out. But the ground floor and second floor of the house would be beyond his limits, as adaptations to the stairs were impossible and he not fit to use normal stair lift.
She refused to believe he would not recover.
When he came home, 6 months later, he was a shadow of himself, he could not even swallow, and had to be tube fed direct to his stomach several times per day. He was not even conscious of needing a wee, or poo. My mum was knackered. She was a petit woman, and my dad a tall giant of nearly 1.80, and she struggled to handle him. He needed several operations to his esophagus. He also nearly died after he had been out for 3 months. Turns out he had been having a bleeding stomach ulcer, and was nearly empty of blood, but nobody had realized. So he had several transfusions. This was October. He has no recollection of events between the stroke on the 27th December, and October the following year. No recollection of his 75th birthday, when my oldest son was born either. He started getting his memory back after his last blood transfusion.
That is when recovery really started.
Today he lives alone in his adapted home. Mum is in a nursing home, she has levy body dementia, and got so bad I had to have her committed, 2 years ago now.
It has been 10 years and he is now 85, and in these 10 years he has continued to recover. He has mastered his new life, and adapted. He can manage living alone, sorting out food, making breakfast and supper. He goes to day care twice a week, and visits my mum at the nursing home. He is picking red currants in the garden, he reads his papers, enjoys using the internet, and still has friends visiting. He cannot walk, but he has his wheelchair and he has the use of one arm, his short term memory is not working very well, but he is still a sharp and intelligent man, he can talk and carry reasonable discussions.
The human brain is fantastic. Even with severe damage it is possible to recover and have reasonably good life.