After three months of bouncing back and forth between hospitals and rehab centers, the decision has been made to call in hospice and allow mom to go home. She has been stroking continuously during the previous 12 weeks, losing a piece of herself each time. The only pain she has experienced during this period was from the daily blood tests, MRI’s with contrast and other invasive tests that left her black and blue and exhausted. Her strokes are painless. Actually, we only know they are happening when she becomes childlike and silly followed by more degradation of her speech.