Surgery Completed...

I'm home recovery from Thursday's brain surgery.

Ouch.

There's good news, bad news, and scary news.

I'll start with the good news. They only had to replace the part of my shunt that's in my brain... so they had to go through my skull into the center of my brain, plus some surgery on the outside of my skull, but they did NOT have to open my abdomen this time! I know this sounds crazy, but seriously, last time, the tummy part was far worse than the brain part. The very first thing I did when I woke up in the PACU was tighten my stomach muscles to see if they hurt. When they didn't, I couldn't stop thanking Jesus!

The bad news is, I am in a LOT of pain and couldn't stay in the hospital long enough. As you may know, here in D.C. we got a lot of snow this weekend. My Neurosurgeon said that if I didn't leave Friday night, I'd be there at least a week. So he wrote me extra pain medication scripts & sent me on my way. I was stable and had been breathing on my own for about 24 hours (only needed the ventilator for a few hours this time!) so the only reason they wanted to keep me was pain control... so we just decided I'd tough it out. I'm used to pain anyway.

The SCARY news is, once they were in my brain they found a collapsed brain ventricle. I'm not sure the specifics - I was pretty out of it when they explained it to me - but I know that sometimes they find it during autopsies rather than before. This MIGHT explain why I ended up back in the hospital in such unbearable pain last Tuesday. Anyway, it's fixed now, they'll just have to keep an eye on me. My CT scans on Friday looked good.

There's a lot more to share, but I'm having a hard time typing so I'll save it for later. I've been able to type short little comments here & there, but wanted to wait until I could give a real update to do anything on my blog. I'll post the whole story as soon as I'm able.

Please pray for pain control & that I do NOT get an infection! Last time my head had two small incisions... this time, I have a FIVE INCH incision with 14 STAPLES!!! Half my head is shaved, right in time for Christmas & having tons of pictures taken... lovely timing. :-P Needless to say, the incisions hurts... but it's also over a large part of my head, so there's a high risk of infection. If that happens, it could go to the shunt, and I'll need emergency surgery within 24 hours or I could go into a coma or even die. My Neurosurgeon said it best: "It probably would be a little worse for you, but believe me, if it gets infected, it won't be any fun for either of us for a long time."