Hello all. Sorry that I failed to get an update out yesterday, but not a significant amount to report.
I spent the night at the hospital with Bobbie on Monday night in preparation for the inbound snow and then all day on Tuesday, working from the hospital (a thank you to my employer for the allowance). Her condition remains fairly unchanged with a few exceptions. She is still in a significant amount of pain and continues to have a constant morphine drip in conjunction with a button that she can voluntarily push for additional doses. They did, however, reduce her constant drip dosage yesterday in, I assume, an attempt to wean her or at least get her down to just the triggered dose. She also managed to get bumped up to an introductory liquid diet yesterday as of about noon. She is now allowed to have up to 12 oz/day of water and/or fruit juice. Hopefully she will soon step up to a full clear liquids diet (to include broth, Jell-o and the like). She hasn't had anything to eat or drink since Thursday, so I'm sure that even the pitiful 12 oz allowance is a welcome event.
She got up and went for 4 walks on both Monday and Tuesday which, as mentioned in prior updates, is good for her lungs as well as getting her digestive system in motion. She also took her first shower since surgery on Monday which was a welcome relief and I think a good "pep up" for her. I know I feel pretty cruddy on the rare occasion that I don't get a shower during a day. Her blood oxygen level remains in flux, but it is trending more toward the lower acceptable end now, so that is a good thing.
- Just got a call from Bobbie while writing this update. New news below. -
She had a pretty decent night last night, but feels really tired this morning (not just sleepy, but fatigued). As expected, she will have her good and bad days during recovery. They apparently had her up at 4:30am to get blood, check vitals, etc. and she has been up since then.
She spoke with both her attending surgeon as well as one of the neurosurgeons (the one running the study from her original brain tumor) and it appears that she will be discharged on Friday. They plan to do the cyberknife surgery on Friday and then she is headed out. She is going to follow up with them today or tomorrow to determine what is involved in recovery once she is discharged. That is, whether or not she will be able to travel to do her recovery in Virginia and when and what follow-up appointments will be necessary following her discharge. Good news that she will be out so "soon", but I am curious as to the apparent practice that they do the brain procedure and then send her right home. As a layman, I would think that they would at least keep her for overnight observation, but maybe this is typically an outpatient procedure. I wish I was there when the neurosurgeon rolled through to ask him questions around that, but I am hoping that I will have an opportunity to do so before the procedure and discharge. I asked Bobbie to have him or his office call me if he is willing to do so. She's so in and out of pain that those thoughts don't come to her right away to ask, not to mention the fact that she has to deal with thinking about the procedure itself along with her current recovery 24/7. You can't blame her for not coming up with those questions on the spot. Her thoughts and concentration are, as they should be, on recovering and getting better, not planning on when to be where.
They are changing her pain medication today to get her off of the morphine. She did not know what they were changing her to when I spoke with her this morning. I will be headed up to the hospital after work and can hopefully get some of these questions answered by the nursing staff if not the doctor on call if Bobbie doesn't have them by the time I get there.
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