post-op update

i all - it's been a busy week here since i last updated everyone.

i am a big fan of sleep and there are few times in life that i appreciate being woken up early in the morning unnecessarily. there are, however, exceptions to this rule. the 6am call i received from my mother yesterday morning, only 14 hours after major brain surgery, was the best wake up call i could ever ask for. the reason for her call - just to know where i was, how i was, and what she wanted for breakfast - "good whole grain toast with yogurt, and english breakfast tea." of course, i brought over exactly what she wanted and she ate a very sizable breakfast.

she was awake and communicative for most of the day yesterday, although she slept on and off. she's still having problems with her short term memory. we must have told her 100 times that she can't scratch her incision, even though it itches.

yesterday afternoon bill and i met with dr. parsa to discuss the surgery and ask him a million questions. here's a summary of what he said:

the surgery was an A+! he felt it was very successful and he feels confident that he removed the entire tumor, that was radio-graphically visible.

the surgery was done looking into a microscope. he had a large photo of the MRI taken of my mom's brain on sunday up in front of him. the MRI is what guided him in the surgery. they essentially map her brain to the MRI, so when they point to a place in the brain, they can see it on the MRI. the incision was a T-shape above her right ear. he was able to make part of the incision in the same place the cut last week was. he removed a large mass, which included a huge amount of blood clot, mixed with tumor. he replaced the metal plate that had been put in two weeks ago with a titanium mesh plate. titanium is very lightweight, will not corrode, and is paramagnetic (meaning that is has a very weak attraction to magnets). this means that she won't set off the security systems in airports, etc.

he put two drains in her head to drain out excess fluid and blood. they both were removed this morning, which is another great sign. dr. parsa saw my mom yesterday at 6:30am and said he thought she was doing extremely well for someone who had just gone through major brain surgery.

he thinks that my mom should have no sustained deficits whatsoever from the surgery, which is fantastic. it is normal that she is unstable and that her short term memory is not great. he thinks the memory issue should resolve itself within days. depending on her stability, she'll likely need some physical therapy while in the hospital.

we were moved out of ICU into a "neuro step-down" unit last night. unfortunately, the step-down unit has no private rooms, so we're sharing a room. she is still on steroids and anti-seizure medicine, both as precautions. she's also taking several vitamins and tylenol. she hasn't had any pain medicine since yesterday at 6am. she's not complaining of headaches or pain.

i've spent the day here with her. we walked up and down the hallway a couple of times, but mostly she's been sleeping. her sodium is low, which is quite normal. this can frequently cause drowsiness, not to mention the drowsiness caused by the surgery itself. she also has a pretty high fever, which is nothing to be seriously alarmed by, but they need to watch it and make sure she doesn't have an infection. they've done a chest x-ray tonight and a blood culture. hopefully we'll be moved to a regular room tomorrow morning, so she'll have some quiet and some privacy.

we did a post-op MRI last night, which is standard after brain surgery. we just got the results of the MRI. ALL CLEAR! dr. parsa just came by and said it looked "awesome". he also said that some level of fever is normal and her white blood cell count looks good so he's not overly concerned about an infection. the main things he said to keep remembering is that she looks great and her scan looked great and he really thinks she'll have a full recovery.

we don't know when she'll be out of the hospital yet, or what kind of radiation we'll be doing, likely some sort of focalized radiation and potentially chemo.

my mom continues to move through this process with a grace and dignity which are amazing. we should all take some pointers from her ability to embrace her situation, look at it straight on, and decide to move through it.

i seem to vacillate between relief as we get each new bit of positive news and total terror as we wait for more news to come with potentially scary outcomes. i am doing my best to be patient and to trust the process, although patience is definitely not one of my strong suits.

so as we embark on this recovery process, i continue to pray and ask for ease.....

may this healing and recovery be complete and easy
may she continue to gain strength daily as her brain heals fully and her fever disappears
may the radiation medicine wash through her brain like a river, clearing any bad cells and not affecting ANY good ones
may she be healed emotionally and physically
and may the cancer be rid of her body forever so that we never, ever, ever, ever, ever have to go through this again.