Thursday 4-16-09
Hated to bother Andreas Neurosurgeon, but glad I did. Gave his office a call this morning requesting Doc call me regarding Andreas increased pain and inform him of the ER visit. He called back within the hour and also seemed very concerned and assured me it was not a bother and to call anytime. So, he wanted to evaluate Andrea and he wanted to do it asap – so we called Grammy and hit the road and Andrea was being examined by Doc at 2:40. He said her shoulder is for sure very painful and should be – he feels that not only is she feeling muscle and bone pain from being propped up for over 14 hours but that possibly a main nerve that runs down her neck into her shoulder was pinched off that entire time. He prescribed her some seizure meds that will hopeflly help calm the nerve, along with the muscle relaxant. He also wants her to continue the pain meds to try and get below a 7. He said she is progressing slower than he would like, but we have to consider the length of the surgery. She still has a lot of fluid in her forehead and right side of her head, but her face swelling is almost all gone and she smiled more yesterday (happy pills). Her right eye still sees nothing and he said there will be a point when we won’t wait for anymore improvement and talk about our options, if any. But we are very hopeful, she does see some lite from his examination lite. He showed us the MRI that was done after the surgery – and the artery and optical nerve that was involved. He is an amazing surgeon and did a very good job without paralyzing her. The radiologist report even said no tumor fragments were found – but Doc said he knows there are some in there, he saw them, he left them – because it was to risky to remove anymore of the tumor from the artery and optical nerve. So months from now will be radiation. The report came back from pathology and IT IS NOT cancer. We will go back for an appt next week – doc told us on Tuesday, but his assistant said he has surgery that day – we will have to wait for a call to know for sure. But if her swelling is not gone, she will have a CT that day also. It is still a road of wait and see and we do not know how long of a road yet. We just want Andrea to be without pain. She so badley wants to attend 3 upcoming inportant events – but she has very sensitive hearing right now and cannot handle much sound. Her attempts to do school work have failed and she worries getting behind. Today we are going to try very hard NOTto talk about Tumors, docs, pain etc. and get our minds somewhere else. If nice weather with no wind we will take a walk outside. We are getting a new roof on house, barn and shed and she had picked out the color one day prior to surgery – it looks very nice. We are very lucky our home insurance policy was a good one. Back in December a big wind storm ripped through our neighborhood and did a lot of shingle damage – so it was deemed a disaster area and insurance is paying for 100 percent replacement, 3 other neighbors may also be getting new roofs. Well, that is all for today.