March 11:

• Today, before visiting hours, Ignacio woke up! He is still intubated and has a million tubes in him. So he was super uncomfortable when he woke up and tried to get out of bed and pull out the tubes. So they sedated him again. But it’s really good news that he woke up. They’re trying to wake him up more slowly now, and while I’m here, so I can hopefully calm him down.
• We’ve had some really nice visits by my Mom, Becky, Kerry and Carolyn. Today, Damian Lobato visited with us for a while. He and Ignacio started dancing around the same time in Mar del Plata and have known each other for over 20 years. I think it’s good for Ignacio to hear Argentine Spanish. Also, we got to see my Mom, Dawn and Becky.
• Huge thanks to Sean Ericson & Jackie Pham, who took over running Viva Tango this week (it was supposed to be Matias, Ignacio & me). Sean, Jackie and Viva Tango are donating all proceeds this Thursday, March 14 to Ignacio’s care. It’s incredibly generous and sweet. The event info is here.
• Tomorrow morning around 9:30 am, Ignacio will have another diagnostic procedure. Please send your thoughts and prayers for him. Thanks!
• I thought the day was over, but they wanted to try waking up Ignacio again, and they let me stay past visiting hours so I could be there with him. They took off all the sedation and he eventually woke up and started communicating with me with blinks. After the typical neurology tests, I kept talking to him. I asked if he wanted to listen to a tango and he winked at me. I asked if he wanted to hear Troilo, and he blinked. Sorry, Juan and Pato, but I joked that maybe he wanted to hear one of your tangos, and he just stared at me. He likes your music, but he loves Troilo. So we listened to “La Maleva” and he fell back to sleep. It felt like a big step.

March 12:

• It’s been hard to write today, and for a good reason. Ignacio is awake and aware for the first time since the stroke. Given the situation, it’s hard for him to be awake and calm, so I’ve been holding his hand and talking to him a lot. He is responding, though he can only do so with blinks, nods and eyebrow raises for now, due to the intubation. Also, he’s been grabbing my hand and moving his leg up to rest against me. Even in this situation, he remains as sweet as you can imagine. Now he’s sleeping again.
• They are talking about reducing his dependency on the ventilator later today, which is wonderful news. That is a stepping stone to extubation and breathing on his own.
• There were too many patients in need today, and they couldn’t take him for the angiogram. It will happen tomorrow.
• Meanwhile, the respiratory therapist came and assessed his ability to breathe on his own and he passed with flying colors. First, they tested his ability to trigger breaths on his own, with the continued support of the machine for taking a full breath. Then, because he did so incredibly well with that, he turned off any assistance for a couple minutes, and Ignacio maintained the rhythm and strength of his breath. This is wonderful, wonderful news.
• Julie Rogan, who works at the hospital, stopped in today and it was fantastic to see her. She completed her PhD in nursing last year and is now doing really interesting work on improving patient outcomes hospital-wide. It’s inspiring. Also, Huaou came and brought sushi, which made my night.
• Each day seems like a year. Hopefully tomorrow will be another good day.
• Thanks to everyone who is reading these updates, and everyone who is sending love, prayers and other good wishes! ❤️ Also, thanks to April & Ross for caring for Sheldon, to Becky for all the informal neurology consultation, to Kerry for the support, to Sandra for making extra keys. So many people have already provided so much support for us. It’s extraordinary.

March 13:

• My computer may have died this morning and I have to wait until my tecnico in Buenos Aires can help me virtually, but I am delighted to find that I can edit the website from my phone.
• Ignacio is largely sleeping today but was very alert this morning. I asked him if he was in pain and he shook his head “no.” And then I asked him if he loved me, and he nodded yes and crinkled his eyes in such an Ignacio way, like saying, “Obvio!” So that was really beautiful.
• The OR is once again overbooked today and they have not taken him for his angiogram. We’ll see if it can happen today. I hope so.
• Visits were great when he was unconscious, but now the situation is different. He needs to remain really calm and not get stimulated, so visits are not really possible at this stage.
• Yay! We just heard that they are coming to take him for the angiogram. It’s a good time to keep Ignacio in your thoughts / prayers for the next couple hours.
• Anti-yay! In the end, he got bumped again. The angio will take place tomorrow. Oy!

March 14

• Here we are, waiting for the angiogram a third day. This whole thing is a remarkable lesson in patience and faith.
• Thank you so much to Kerry, Karen and Dawn, who launched this gofundme on Ignacio’s behalf last night. Thanks to everyone who has donated and/or shared!
• Thank you to Yael & Tan for filming and editing our performance in Milonga Parakultural in El Marabu from February 20, 2024. It means the world to me to see these videos. I’ve posted the first, Guapeando and will post the others over the next day or two.
• We got bumped yet again. Hopefully, the angiogram happens tomorrow. And Ignacio is running a significant fever. They are using a cooling blanket to bring it down, and it’s quite amazing how well it works. Fevers are to be expected in this situation, and it’s been treated with antibiotics, but I will be happy when it resolves. Somehow, though, he looks calmer and more himself now. So that’s good.
• They allowed me to stay in the hospital tonight to be with him, so here I am.

March 15

• Finally, Ignacio is leaving for the angiogram right now at 2:28 pm. If you read this, please send some good wishes off to the universe on his behalf!
• YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!! The angiogram was clear. He doesn’t have an aneurysm or an AVM. He doesn’t need to have surgery. He just has to keep healing and then rehabilitating. This is what the word “relief” means! Hopefully, tomorrow they can extubate him. Very much hoping for that!

March 16

• Today we had a good meeting among Ignacio’s neurologist, Dr. Sanam Baghshomali at Temple University Hospital, Becky Ichord, the amazing tanguera who is a neurologist at CHOP and teaches at Penn, and myself. It’s is a great comfort to know that there are such extraordinary professionals invested in his care.
• Ignacio still has a long way to go to finish draining out the blood that accumulated in his brain during the stroke. That is accomplished by a drain that they put in immediately (in the emergency room!), and by the natural healing process of the brain itself. It will take weeks to complete. He is not far enough along in that process for it to be ok to extubate him, and so he is still on the ventilator. It’s a bummer, but it’s the best thing for him.

March 17

• Everything is stable and the same today.
• A couple days ago, he had a pneumonia and high fever (extremely common in these situations). That has improved significantly. He’s still getting antibiotics and has no or little fever. As he clears the junk from his lungs, it creates difficult moments where he feels awful. It’s all so hard to watch.
• Thanks for all of your love, thoughts, prayers and support. It’s been just over a week now, and it’s going to be a long road.

March 18

• We had hoped that he might be extubated today, but it’s not going to happen. Instead, they may need to do another procedure tomorrow. I knew from the beginning that this was going to be a marathon, but even the very first stage feels like a marathon.
• Thank you for holding Ignacio in your thoughts and prayers. He will especially really need them tomorrow morning, if the procedure happens. I will keep you updated.

March 19
Long update today on the specifics of the situation in Ignacio’s brain. If you’d rather not know the specifics, better to wait and read tomorrow!

• Ignacio has had, since the stroke, a signficant amount of blood in a ventricle in his brain. It’s in a place where the body doesn’t have many resources for breaking it down and clearing it. That’s one reason why the process is so slow. In the emergency room, they had put in an EVD, a drain, to drain off the excess blood / fluids, and keep a continuous monitor on the pressure in his brain. They don’t put the drain in the area of the stroke. They put it on the other side of the brain. And so, there are a whole set of plumbing considerations - how the blood moves from the site of the stroke to the other side of the brain to release through the drain. At the same time, his body is working on breaking down and clearing out the excess blood as well. So between those two systems, the idea is to eventually clear out all of that blood.
• This was all working ok until it wasn’t. The ventricle started to collapse around the drain, because of the suction, and that decreased the amount of fluid that could move through the ventricle and out of his brain through the drain. They were observing the situation for a while, and yesterday, all of a sudden recommended putting a small amount of anticoagulant directly into his brain (!!!) to try to get the situation moving. To dissolve any clots that were keeping the natural fluid movements of the brain from working.
• I felt freaked out about the anticoagulant, but Ignacio’s family and I decided to give it a try. In the end, however, we got lucky… Overnight his CT scan showed that the situation had mobilized somewhat, the ventricle had increased in size somewhat and it looked like the blood was moving again. But there’s still a long way to go with that. It takes at least 4-6 weeks for it to clear completely. But it’s important that the process continue.
• Since they explained the situation, I’ve been imagining dancing with that stagnant blood - ok, that sounds crazy, but whatever - trying to coax it into movement, convince it to find a way through and out, so Ignacio can keep healing. If you want to join me in imagining a playful, dancey interaction that convinces the blood to find its way out naturally, without resorting to using the drug, please do join me in this visualization!

March 20

• They are about to extubate Ignacio and let him breathe on his own. It’s nearly 11 am here. Please think about him over the next hour, if you can.
• It was a bit of a roller coaster. Initially, the extubation seemed successful, and then it looked like it wouldn’t work out. But he managed to cough up a whole lot of stuff, cleared his airway well, and has been breathing well ever since.
• Thank you so much for all of your thoughts, prayers and support. Ignacio took a huge step forward today. It’s an enormous deal.

March 21

• I got a call about Ignacio in the middle of the night last night. Through all of this, there had been no call. I would love to make a universal rule that no one should ever have to get a call in the middle of the night about their loved one.
• Since Ignacio was extubated, he’s been on much less sedation than at any time before now. So he started talking to me some, and being more present (both great), but also had gotten very fidgety and sometimes agitated. That is very normal after strokes like his. All day yesterday, I reminded him to take long, slow breaths, explained why this and that tube, restraint, and other annoyance was necessary and had to be tolerated. And we kept it under control.
• But in the middle of the night, he freaked out and used his foot to pull out his catheter, creating quite a scene. They had trouble getting it back in, I had to be called to approve a procedure and to approve his potential reintubation, if they couldn’t calm him down. The kind of sedation he would have needed would have required intubating him again. He can’t experience agitation like that because of the recent stroke - when the pressure in his head goes up, he’s in danger. So he would have had to be intubated again, which is not ideal in any way.
• His doctor wanted me to come in to keep him calm, but the bureaucracy of the hospital has no way to approve a visiting loved one outside of visiting hours when it’s already the middle of the night. Ugh!
• I went back to sleep, but kept shaking, a combination of mostly fear and also the unseasonable cold. I didn’t know if he was intubated, if he was freaking out, if he had someone anyone there with him.
• I got here as always this morning at the beginning of visiting hours. I get here at 9 am and leave between 7:30 and 8 pm, at least 10.5 of the 11 daily visiting hours. And I walked in to a beautiful sight. Ignacio, sleeping peacefully, and still breathing on his own. What a gift. I’m still shaking, but a hot earl grey tea is helping.
• I wrote a little more this time, so you see what my days are like. It’s incredibly hard, but I love him so much and it’s a gift, or even a miracle, that he is still here, available to be loved.
• Sorry, last thing. His CT scan overnight showed some good progress in breaking down the blood that was left over in his brain from the stroke. The color has gotten lighter, meaning that his body is doing its work, breaking the blood down into its component parts, and clearing them out of where they don’t belong. Thanks to everyone joined me in that visualization to try to dancingly clear that blood! It has worked!

March 22

• The best news: Ignacio’s brother, Ariel, has traveled all the way from Mar Del Plata, Argentina. He’s been traveling for the better part of two days, and he’s now in a Megabus, about to get off of the NJ Turnpike and onto I-95. Ignacio will get to see him this evening. There are angels working in the background, helping this and other things to happen. We are so grateful!
• Medically, Ignacio is going in the right direction. There’s a lot of waiting at this stage. But he just saw me eating a pear… And he’s not allowed to eat yet. He’s not ready to swallow reliably and is only getting nutrition through a tube and hydration through the IV. So he saw me eating, which I try to avoid, and he gave me a big old middle finger. Like, why the fuck do you get to eat and me not?
• The Doctors say the “fuck you” is a very good sign!

March 23

• Here getting everything ready for the milonga, while Ariel Ondartz spends time in the hospital with Ignacio. Already it’s been night and day to have Ariel here. Ignacio really needed family, and I needed support from someone else who loves Ignacio. It’s been wonderful. Please come out to Milonga Qilombo tonight. If we can get Ariel to stay until midnight, we’ll be celebrating his birthday! (Argentines generally have a superstition against celebrating early, for that reason, I want to keep him here until his birthday starts at midnight!)

March 24

• Thank you to everyone who came out to Milonga Qilombo last night to join all our love and abrazos and send them to Ignacio.
• Guess what? IT WORKED.
• Ignacio made huge, huge improvements overnight. Until now, he had only said a few words, and yesterday, we couldn’t understand him at all.
• Now, Ariel, his brother, and I are having long conversations with him. He’s speaking in complete sentences, understanding everything and clearly remembers everyone and everything we mention. Also, his movement is much, much better, and his mood, too. It’s something like a miracle.
• It’s also Ariel’s birthday, and wow! Ignacio has the right idea about how to celebrate!
• Ignacio asked to listen to tango and SANG THE LYRICS with Demare.
• Emiliano and Sergio came to the hospital, and Sergio played a private concert for Ignacio. It was incredible. Ignacio was amazed and so happy and we were all moved to tears.
• After the concert, he turned my hand in a certain position that we didn’t understand. And started to use it as fretboard, practicing guitar chord fingerings.
• This is the greatest day ever!

March 25

• Today is a huge day.
• In Buenos Aires, a huge number of organizers and Ignacio’s friends are preparing a Benefit Milonga in Support of Ignacio in La Nacional, with live music by Orquesta Tipica Misteriosa Buenos Aires.
• Here in Philadelphia, they are going to remove the EVD, the drain and pressure gauge that has been in his brain since the stroke. They may be taking it out a little early because they fear or want to avoid infection. I feel like he can really use all our thoughts and prayers to help support his brain in maintaining a healthy pressure without the drain. Thank you, everyone! It will happen some time this afternoon. I’ll post here when I know when it’s going to happen.
• Not much advance notice around here! They took the drain out just now. Now hoping beyond hope that his brain does its work and keeps clearing and draining on its own! ❤️🙏🙏🙏❤️

March 26

• Yesterday became very, very difficult. Ignacio was not ready, as it turns out, to maintain the drainage of cerebral-spinal fluid on his own. And I watched him get worse and worse throughout the evening / night, without being able to convince anyone that that was happening. Thank god for Becky Ichord (my neurologist-tanguera friend who advises me.) She said: at this point, you’ve spent more time observing him than anyone else. If you think something is wrong, trust yourself, and insist.
• Finally, a neurologist here came, and examined him, and said that yes, the change was probably greater than the normal fluctuations (better and worse) that happen typically in recoveries like his.
• They sent him to CT scan immediately, and it looked ok, but it can’t detect everything.
• The neurologist said that probably the neurosurgeons would want to put the drain back in. When they finally came, they perplexingly made Ariel and I not only consent, but also make the decision to do it. WTF? Again, consulted with Becky about the risks each way and confirmed that it was riskier to do nothing than place a new drain.
• In the time it took to consult her and for Ariel and me to decide, the neurosurgeon disappeared and didn’t come back for like four hours. I was beside myself. It was a terrible wait, with such a huge fear that we were wasting the extraordinary progress that he had made.
• Finally, after midnight they placed the drain and it went well.
• This morning, the super neurosurgeon boss confirmed that the right decision had been made, that it was necessary to place the drain again.
• He also brought more good news… earlier today, they were saying that almost definitly Ignacio was going toward surgery to place a permanent shunt that would drain fluid from his brain. We were not very happy about that. But the super neurosurgeon boss, when he came, said that he had faith that Ignacio was in the process of resolving the drainage situation on his own. He just needs some more time to do so. He’d rather not go with the shunt, but rather, try to get everything else in the situation stable, and see if the drainage would resolve on its own. If not, the last resort is the shunt, but we are not there now.
• Now, Ignacio is comfortable again and mostly sleeping, but talked to me a bit. He seems stable and ok again.
• Ariel and I are absolutamente hechos pelota, but grateful that he is stable again.
• And imagine, all of that played out against a background of a huge, amazing, sold-out milonga in Ignacio’s honor in La Nacional in Buenos Aires, that raised over 1.000.000 pesos toward his care. Photo and video links soon.
• Around 2:30 pm today, Ignacio woke up and got more and more interactive. It’s the most incredible thing to see a brain turn from “off” to “on.” We’ve seen it twice now, Sunday and today, and it’s electrifying. There were multiple stages of the wake up - and funnily enough, one was scrolling and clicking randomly on my phone - but finally he woke up enough to start speaking coherently again, making jokes and making fun of me.
• I said maybe we could compose a thank you to the organizers who made the milonga in his honor in Buenos Aires last night such a success. He tried to tell me what to write, but I couldn’t understand him well enough. I suggested that I could offer phrases and he could say yes or no. And he was like, “under no circumstances.” So I was like, “You don’t want me to write, because I’m going to write everything wrong (in Spanish).” And he was like, “obviously!”
• You can’t imagine how great and right it feels to laugh with Ignacio again.
• Also, he sang to me from “La Traviata” and so I was downright crying when the social worker that I’ve been waiting for for days showed up. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Of course he was singing Verdi right then.

March 27

• Today is going beautifully so far. I’ve started giving Ignacio neck massages, now that I am more sure about where all his wires and tubes are and can touch him more without endangering him. He really loves getting a neck massage. So I gave him a neck rub, and then I put my head down on his leg to take a nap, and he gave me a head rub. I think it’s amazing for both of us for him to be able to reciprocate the care.

March 28

• This is day 19 in Neurological Intensive Care.
• Yesterday, Ignacio failed the swallow test that would have allowed him to start eating and drinking. He’s been tube-fed all this time. He did pretty well at first, but got tired by the fourth swallow and didn’t protect his airway correctly in the last two swallows.
• It is enormous work to repair a damaged brain. His body is working overtime, and he’s impressed everyone with how he’s doing, but it is taking and will take a while.
• Today, they’re doing another extended test to see if he can get by without external drainage of Cerebral Spinal Fluid. The stress of watching the pressure build up in your loved one’s brain, or at least think or fear that that’s what you’re seeing… it’s unbelievably awful.
• I am almost completely unable to get anything done that is not taking care of him and staying alive. The weight of the visa applications I need to finish, the festival, the tango school, the Tango Therapy Project, which I’ve abandoned ship on, everything… it all hangs really heavily over me right now.
• I am reading “My Stroke of Insight,” by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, about the hemorrhagic stroke she suffered when she was 37. It’s excellent. She recovered completely and remained lucid enough during the stroke and in the recovery process to remember in detail and write this amazing book. What a gift to the world!
• Well, it’s a few hours later, and Ignacio is surprising me by tolerating having the drain closed. It had seemed like he wasn’t… his pressure had been high up in a range that would have been dangerous, if sustained. But it has come down. What a roller coaster this is. Thanks for all the love that you’re all sending to him, to Ariel, and to me.

March 29

• The drain in Ignacio’s brain has been clamped closed for the past 28.5 hours, and though it’s been a bit harrowing for me, he is tolerating it. This is huge. They will proceed conservatively, since the first drain removal on Monday was too early. They’ll wait over the weekend, and assuming all is good, they’ll remove the drain on Monday. Once that happens, he most likely does not need to be in the Neuro ICU anymore, and would move to a regular floor. On a regular floor, he’ll get all the good stuff that he hasn’t had any of yet: physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, another chance to practice swallowing and start eating and drinking. Imagine - he hasn’t had anything to drink since March 9.
• Because he’s doing well, I was able to leave the hospital after four hours, leaving Ariel there, and come back to the studio to rest, work, and listen to the first game of the Phillies’ season. The Phillies kept it a secret who would be throwing out the first pitch. I assumed it was maybe Chase Utley. They revealed the secret during the ceremony saying “he needs no introduction.” The dramatic reveal didn’t work so great for those of us who prefer listening on the radio. After one full minute of dramatic music, and the crowd screaming, we heard: Charlie Manuel. The Phillies Manager who brought us the 2008 World Championship, and who had a stroke only 6 months ago. Dammit I can’t stop crying.
• It’s the second time crying today… the first was when Ignacio’s doctor said that he would personally intervene and advocate all he possibly could to make sure that Ignacio gets into the best acute rehabilitation facility for neuro rehab, and gets to stay there as long as necessary to get all the help he needs. He gave me his card and said call his office absolutely any time. I’m always evaluating what information to give Ignacio. Always editing to provide the most hope, give him the most confidence, and the least worry, and to make it really compact since extended conversation exhausts him. I thought about the rehab news and decided he could handle some of it. So I explained a bit about his doctors’ going to bat for him, about everyone’s commitment to his full recovery, so he could return to dancing, teaching and living life to the fullest. I got the words out, and he understood, but man, the tears…
• Thanks to everyone who is accompanying us by reading these updates. It means a lot.

March 30

• Yesterday, around 4:30 pm, Ignacio’s brain bled again, and they don’t know why, or if it came from the left side, like before, or from the right. It may have been the original bleed again, but now filling the other ventricle. Of course, I can’t help but think it had to do with pushing his body so far with the clamp test and letting his blood pressure rise as well, but we will likely never know. For now, he is maybe stable, but it’s a huge setback, like starting from the beginning with the recovery. It’s too much. Thank God, again, for Becky Ichord, who was with Ariel and me, helping us understand what is going on. There are no words for how much she has helped and supported us.
• Ariel and I were unable to talk to the attending neurologist until an hour ago, a whole day after the stroke. I was beside myself. But we just talked and it calmed me down.
• No one knows why his brain bled again and we may never know. The obvious reasons - aneurysm, AVM or blood clotting disorder - have been or are being ruled out.
• However the new bleed was in a ventricle, not in brain tissue, and so, while it slows down his recovery for sure, his doctor says that it does not change his prognosis.
• Do we believe that? We have decided to. Hope is transformative. I spent most of the last day without it and it was horrible. Adding hope back into the equation makes me feel like a superhero.

March 31

• Ignacio remains stable today. Once again, working on clearing blood from his brain. It breaks my heart that he had this setback, and has to do the work all over again. He is sedated, because he’s intubated again, but he’s also conscious and interactive with us, mainly with his hand. He manages to say a lot, nonetheless, with his hand. All of your prayers and thoughts are so appreciated. What he has to overcome is enormous, but he’s very strong, and very motivated.
• It has meant everything to have his brother, Ariel, here. We make a good team. When Ignacio wasn’t intubated and could talk some, he was his typical extremely funny self. We keep laughing together about things that happened last week. For example, Ignacio squeezed his right hand for the first time, and Ariel was like, “Dude, when the doctors asked you to squeeze that hand, you didn’t do anything and now you’re moving it like a champ.” And Ignacio gives a big shrug, and says, “Estaba hecho pelota.” You’ll have to find an Argentine to translate that for you, but the affect and the words, absolutely hysterical.
• Other times, when we tried to understand him and could not (because he didn’t have much force behind his words and wasn’t moving his lips and tongue enough yet), he would roll his eyes and shake his head, and basically be like, “I can’t believe my life is in the hands of these absolute idiots.” Oh, we laughed so much!
• Right now, all we want is to get back to laughing like that all together.
• Ariel has extended his stay twice. He would have left yesterday, but instead leaves on April 8. What a relief that he can stay. Thank you to Sandra Eng and family for housing him so generously!