It’s Alive

Brain surgery is now in the books of things I never imagined I would have done in my lifetime. To say I was shocked at the speed and duration of not only the surgery, but hospital stay and recovery is an understatement.

I know everyone handles surgery, stress, medical, etc differently. I went in worried about side effects, recovery, pain, and unknown complications or findings. Brent once again was talking me off the edge telling me not to stress over things I can’t change and don’t know. Once again he was right.

We headed up on a Monday, since I needed to be at the hospital at 0630. My pops came from Minnesota to take care of the house and critters, and my brother drove over from Seattle to hang out with Brent for a couple days. It was nice to see all the men in my life, and spend some quality time with my dad before having to leave for Spokane. And it was great that my brother came over to see Brent and myself for a night, although he reaped the benefits of seeing us by going home with farm fresh eggs, venison meat sticks, elk brats, halibut, salmon, and wine from my recent trip to Leavenworth.

Surgery. The worst part was waiting in pre-op for 6 hours. We got to the hospital at 0730 (they called and bumped me back an hour), and I got checked in to pre-op. I then went on to get a pre-surgical MRI so they would know exactly where to cut. After that was done around 9 AM I was back at pre-op and waited. I sent Brent off to take a nap and said they would call him when I was ready to go in. Finally, at 1:30 PM my anesthesiologist and surgeon came in to talk to me. My surgeon, having as off color sense of humor as myself, first walks in and says “you have the most beautiful head” (a running joke between the two of us). It definitely made us both crack a smile and ease some of my anxiety. I then asked when I could expect my psychic abilities to kick in, and was greeted with a similar snarky response of once we get all those other voices out of your head. He apologized for the delay, but said they needed to clean up the blood bath from the previous surgery first – yes, dark humor coming from my neurosurgeon. So at almost 2 PM, more than six hours after I had gotten checked in I was finally given my sleep drugs and wheeled into surgery. Two hours later, I was getting a follow-up CT, placed in recovery and then sent up to ICU. Brent and Michael were there and updated me that all went well. I was rummy on Dilaudid, benadryl and anesthesia but was able to request food for the first time in over 24 hours. Soup was the theme for the week. The boys headed out and I slept. The next day I was moved off of ICU, continued the pain and anti-itch medication, along with some anti-seizure medicine that is standard protocol post brain surgery.

Three nights in the hospital and I was kicked to the curb. Happy to go home and sleep in my own bed with my critters giving me some loves. I was told to move as often as I could but not vigorously. I took that to heart and everyday I did a little more movement and a lot less medicine. 4 days after being home, one week after surgery, I was off opioids, off the anti-seizure medicine, and doing light activity. Wow! I called some friends and family, mainly because I was bored. Hard not to move when you don’t feel that bad. I am still in awe that I have been home 10 days, 2 weeks since surgery and I’m walking up and down my lane, doing chores around the house, visiting with neighbors and checking on my garden.

Side effects. Other than itching from the adhesive they had attached to me from the EKG leads, and a dull soreness on my head from the clamp, I haven’t had anything more severe then fatigue. I’m trying to respect my recovery by resting when I need to, but not slipping into being a sloth. So far I feel I have been relatively successful. The only other side effect I had was an intense hunger from the anti-seizure medication that saw me grazing non-stop from when I got up to when I went to sleep. Today I finally feel that drug has cleared my system and any over eating is due to boredom and the yummy treats the neighbors brought us. I hope I can lose the few pounds I managed to pack on in that short period of time. Stupid drugs.

I head up to Spokane this week to see my surgeon for a post operative check-up and removal of the sutures in the back of my head (so my husband can stop calling me zipper head as the sutures are black and do resemble a zipper). I am hoping I am given freedom to do some more rigorous exercising and hopefully start driving again. Mushrooms have popped and Brent picked 3.5 pounds of morels one afternoon, makes me jealous and I want to try my hand at it for a bit, but also don’t want to do anything that could risk my recovery.

So that, in a nutshell was my experience with brain surgery. Sit around for hours, get the cyst removed, get moved to a room, sleep, go home and start moving around and reducing my daily caloric intake. The cyst sounds like there was no active cancer in it, so all is good. Now back in recovery mode and looking forward to a busy summer.