We just got “the call” from the hospital and they told us the surgery will be Thursday, January 23rd. Two weeks from today. Now that we know when that is, I need to get myself ready. I think I’ll be better this time around than the last. I have a bit more of an idea of what to expect this time around.
Curious as to how this/these cuts will come out since I can still feel the “dents” in my skull on the top of my head from the last surgery.
I saw my Neurologist today. I had actually publicized that the appointment was supposed to be on Thursday. But, whatever. Saw the doctor, and I got to see images of my brain from the MRI scan on Monday. Interesting. I’ve seen such images of my brain before, but the doctor wanted to make sure there wasn’t any shown damage of my pulling the cables from my head while I was in the hospital before. Luckily, there was not any damage shown.
First of all, there is another patient that is “in line” before me. So, I can’t just hop in tomorrow and get this done. On the 20th, the surgeon is out of town and will be back on the 23rd. So, the surgery will either be on the 23rd, 24th or 27th. We are waiting till next week on either Tuesday or Thursday to get a call with a decision of the best date to go forward with the surgery. The Neurologist is also leaving to go to Turkey on Valentines Day, so he wants to make sure I get in and out before he leaves.
Hope everyone had a good Christmas. My family and I did. Sherry and I were watching TV around 8:00 or 8:30 and I felt an aura. When these happen, I can’t talk but I look over to Sherry and make eye contact with her and she knows what is happening. Smaller ones (just auras) that I have more often, come to me and pass fairly quickly. This time the aura came on and turned into a full-fledged seizure that lasted about 5-minutes, which seems like an hour. After the seizure was over, it took my body a good 10-15 minutes to fully relax back to “normal”.
I feel much better today.
I’m still having the MRI on Monday the 30th and seeing my Neurologist on Thursday the 2nd. Hope I don’t need to write about another one of these seizures again soon.
I just read this NPR article that talked about the exact same surgery I had. It had an audio portion further down the page where you could listen to “An Epileptic Seizure in Sound”. This is very wicked and weird.
Oh, and I’m sure that you may want to read the article, too. Very interesting. Now, they talk about using small jolts of electricity to cause the person to do things. I didn’t get that far in the testing because I pulled those few leads out of my head. But, they got enough of what they needed. I’m going to have a map laid out on my brain next time I go in for my next surgery. This date isn’t set yet. We’ll have to wait and see…
Sunday night, Sherry was removing the gauze from the left side of my head where the “wound dehiscence” (picture from November 28) was covered. When the gauze was removed, it pulled the scab out of it. Not a pretty sight. This was a bit before 10 o’clock and we decided that I should to go to the emergency room. If I do, we had instructions to go all the way to the KU Med to make sure that I am taken care by people that know of my situation.
So, got to the hospital and checked in at about 10:45. About 1:45, we were told that we were next and had 30 seconds till the room was ready. Just then a trauma came in and took that room. My 30 seconds were gone! Whatever, we’ll wait. Then we were finally led back to a room at 2:40 where I had three different doctors come in at separate times and I flashed them the hole in my head. They each looked, stepped back and said that they needed to wait for the of the Neurosurgeon’s team that in the hospital at the time to come take a look at the hole in my head.
About 5:45, the Neurosurgeon’s team member showed up to take a look at the hole. He was throwing around ideas of things that may have to be done, such as stitches or taking me back into the operating room. Eh… He wasn’t for sure what he should do. So, he took a picture of the hole in head with his phone and sent it to the main neurological surgeon’s phone and he called him at home. The main surgeon basically just said to keep it clean and change the dressing twice a day because he’s thinking it’s going to heal itself from the inside out. Well, this is exactly what we were doing all this time.
So, we spent ALL this time at the hospital and were just told to keep doing what we were already doing. Did a prescription for an antibiotic, which happened to be the exact same one I was on before and had just run out of. I guess sitting around all night at the hospital just to get a refill of that was the about all I got.
I finally did get appointments set up on Monday. I see the Neurosurgeon on Wednesday this week, have my MRI on the 30th and see my Neurologist on the 3rd. That’s where I’m at right now. Need to cut these dang hospital bands off my wrist again. I’m getting a pretty good collection of those.
The Catalpa Chronicles 