Foggy thoughts

In my "day" job, I work on the 13th floor (really!). It is so foggy this morning it looks like someone threw a blanket over the building. I can't see a thing out of the windows. It's really creepy. I'm feeling a little claustraphobic. Maybe the building is floating in the clouds.....or maybe I just didn't get enough sleep last night. My youngest granddaughter (11 months) stayed over and decided to start screaming at 1am. I love her but I wish I could turn down the volume once in a while. haha

It's a "good" trauma day too. I'd much rather be on the ambulance than sitting behind a desk. I've heard people that work in trauma say they crave it, and somehow I caught that bug. I guess everyone has their cravings; chocolate, alcohol, etc. Mine just happens to include blood & guts. ha.

KT is doing great. Small headaches, but she says she can handle those. She passed her trig test yesterday so she's happy at meeting one of her goals, even with missing all that school. Trig looks like chinese writing to me so I sure can't help her. haha I have a hard enough time adding 1+1. That's why God gave us computers. haha

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Eating-too-much & no counting fat or calories day! We'll be going to my aunt's house and out to eat somewhere, then sitting in front of the tv digesting and going to bed around 7pm. Then we'll get up early & power shop. I'd prefer to sleep in, but my aunt loves to shop & since we love her we'll be hitting every store in Delaware & Maryland I think.

I like watching all the crazy people (like my aunt) act like locusts. It's humanity at it's best. I always wonder where that Christmas Spirit is when there's only one item left & there's 4 people fighting over it. And why do you have to have whatever the person next to you is looking at? It's like you're afraid they know something you don't and you just have to have that thing, even though you have no clue what it's for.

KT & I will be singing carols as we skip thru the stores, and doing everything possible to embarrass my aunt. Enjoy the holiday everyone!

Back to Reality

Thank you everyone for the thoughts & prayers & well wishes. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update - I've been in a kind of fog. I'm afraid to let my guard down & relax when it comes to KT so I think I've been like a robot. I haven't really been enjoying anything.

She's back to school part time. Still having small headaches but it's much better than it was prior to surgery. The docs say she's back to pre-surgery status, and eventually she'll have to have the surgery all over again. Great. At 6 weeks they will re-evaluate her & decide if they can wait or have to go back in right away. She says she'll take these little headaches rather than go thru surgery again and I can't blame her. We'll just have to wait and see. I hate the "waiting game".

I need to "live in the now", focus on what we've got at the moment rather than worry about the future. She had a good birthday, with a big bonfire & lots of friends & marshmallows & chocolate. And it was dark so she wasn't worried about her lovely hair doo.

Not for the squeamish....

What can I say? The surgery was horrible. She went in on Wednesday morning for the "simple" revision. Before she even came out of the OR she started vomiting. They began saying it was due to the anesthesia, but it was apparent quickly that something else was wrong. She was in a lot of pain and couldn't stop heaving her poor little guts out. They did a CT scan and found a lot of blood in the brain around the shunt. They tried to "tap" the shunt - ok, let me go on my first rant here. The word Tap makes me think of Shirley Temple dancing happily in her movies (yes, my age is showing). When they say "tap", they mean stick a needle in the freshly placed shunt & draw out fluid. KT was already sick & feeling like she was going to die, and they started pushing on the surgery site and trying to find the right place to "tap". KT was screaming by the time they found the right place to put the needle. Anyway, they couldn't get any fluid out so they rushed her back to surgery to start all over again. They flushed her out and put in a new one.

Poor kid. She came out of the second surgery a lot quieter than the first, thank goodness. Unfortuately when she woke up she not only had incisional pain, but a headache also. Now, you would think that since they had to operate twice she should have a headache, but the docs were very concerned. "She should not have any headache at all. She should be ready to do cartwheels". Uh, yeah. They did another CT scan and it showed lots of blood still there. Bad news. Apparently blood doesn't flow too well thru shunts. It's a lot thicker than the cerebral spinal fluid the ventricles of the brain makes. They keep her another day to "observe".

On Friday the doc comes in and says they can keep her or send her home, since the treatments will be same. Rest and pain killers. "It's 50/50 at this point. Either the blood will resolve on it's own or we'll have to go back in". And they couldn't give us a time frame for the blood to resolve because "it's not normal for this to happen". Uh, yeah. So we came home with her oxycodone & Nightmare before Christmas pillow Friday night.

Saturday she had a low grade headache all day, but it got worse that night so she took an oxy. Sunday was a nightmare. She crawled out of bed crying about the pain in her head. The inicision didn't even really hurt - she just had yet another killer headache. She took another pain pill - here I go again. I don't know how people can become addited to those things. They do absolutely nothing for her pain. She kept forgetting things for about an hour after she took them, but they don't touch the pain. I guess they're only good if you're not having pain?

Anyway, we went back to Hopkins yesterday. They did another CT & "tapped" the shunt again. Good news/bad news: The CT showed there wasn't any blood in the brain; the bad news is when they tapped the shunt instead of the fluid running clear it was red from blood. Now, I'm no doctor but it seems that if the shunt is sucking blood then there must be bleeding somewhere. They told us the shunt was working fine, and since she's stable they don't want to do any more surgery at the moment and risk irritating the area further. That makes sense. So now it's the waiting game. We have to wait and see what happens. I've got my bags packed just in case we have to sprint the 100 miles to the hospital at any moment. Ugh.