November 2002 rediagnosed with a recurring tumor I am going to bring you through the whole fun thing
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
|
|
|
|
Brain Tumor History And Other Rants
|
|
| |
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Here is most of what I can remember, and some things I won't tell about my second operation:
So Tuesday comes around, no breakfast for surgery boy. I wait until they come to get me around 10:30. The whole morning, my nerves are going mainly because I had no breakfast probably. Me minus food = ugly. So I get a ride back to the building I was in 16 hours before but to the surgery door. This is it fight or flight and they got wires sticking out of my head I ain’t flying anywhere. So my surgeon is there, some nurses, the anesthesiologist, my parents. So I start firing a few questions. The first surgery wrecked my voice but for this one since they are waking me up during it and need me to talk, they aren’t putting anything in my throat, here’s a guy with a limp non-functioning hand, worrying about his voice. Yes you read right, they are waking me up and talking to me during this operation. It goes like this; they wheel me in, put a new line in my arm start up the happy juice, I go to sleep. When the head is all opened up and they need to start cutting, they bring me back just enough so while they stimulate areas I can tell them I feel things. Now keep in mind one of the doctors that did the mapping was right there in my face coaching me through this. She was great, if it was up to me because I was doped up still I just kept saying let me go to sleep, over and over. This went on for like 2 hours. You see it’s like this, my surgeon wanted to get out as much bad stuff, but keep in touch stuff like my sensation, so he could do it asleep and cut up to where my finger wiggled, but, awake he will know when I feel a sensation, something he wouldn’t know if I was sleeping. It went on for 2 hours but it doesn’t seem that long in retrospect maybe one hour. They get all the information they need from you, then they put you asleep again, which was fine with me.
So the next thing you know they wake you up in pain. I saw my surgeon at my feet and called him over. I told him to put his hand in my left hand. I squeezed his hand with more strength than I had pre-surgery. I knew I would have more strength after surgery none of the doctors could predict this. So I am all in pain and they didn’t want to give me morphine. So they shot me up with codeine. Moved me back to Neuro-ICU now into my third room for those keeping count. I get another shot of codeine. Still does nothing. I finally got a nice morphine shot on the third time. Time for no pain and wacky dreams. Now this shot proved to be filled with lots of magic in the hallucination zone. I remember in the middle of the night from the darkness, my cat bitchy meowed to me. There were some voices also, but I don’t know what they were saying. I was in and out of sleep. I had a woman nurse who was really nice. I remember she was in one of my scenarios too. Something about the fact that she went away on vacation and her sister was mad and jealous. So she gave her sister her frequent flyer miles to go away, but for whatever reason they needed another person on the plane so they used me saying well this guy will be out of it and sleeping take him. Well we got ½ way there, and the people on the plane were like we got to get this guy back to the hospital, he’s a mess. Let me not forget boarding the plane we slid down these carnival type slides, and the walls were painted in those Dunkin Doughnuts colors. Now keep in mind I am not allowed in a plane until my head gets solid because of the pressure changes. My whole plan to get to a nice sunny destination was flawed. So later when the nurse came in I asked her if she had any sisters, she said she had 3 so I told her about my twisted dream and her jealous sister, I don’t know which one it was. So I was a ball of laughs when I would wake up from these colorful hallucinations.
I was able to get breakfast, from the woman that I called the breakfast angel, and was scheduled for an MRI to check on the hole in my head. I of course had like 3 lines in my arms 2 in my right. One line in my left. No more lines out of my head, not even a blood drain, just one big football helmet compression dressing, and a catheter which comes out before I get up. The dressing was wrapped around my head so damn tight, cause it was what holding humpty dumpty together, but it came across the edges of my eyebrows and covered my ears. I had made a vow to one of my nurses that I would be sitting up in a chair on Wednesday, and walking on Thursday. Well the nurse I swore that I would be sitting up on Wednesday came by and said so it’s time to get you out of bed, and this was a big guy, Leon a great nurse, so of couse rag-a-muffin me had to suck it up and get up. So they come to get me in the middle if the day for my MRI in a wheel chair. I am feeling like hell. You know that bus has hit me and I am awake why? My left arm is still useless at this point. The transport lady stopped at the courtyard to show me their koi pond which is tiny. I told her that was my dinner. But I am feeling like 100 years old at this point being wheeled by all these Pharmaceutical tie wearing reps thinking, I am youngish, and they all have no clue what this is like. I get down to MRI, and have to wait like 20 minutes. It’s so bad that the long term employees down there know me. I get wheeled in and not only can’t I jump on the bed myself. I have to wrap my good around the back of this guy’s neck so he can guide me onto this table. I am sure I wasn’t the first or last person he helped, but it was me that was feeling like what am I gonna do. How do you tie sneakers one handed? Oh they tell me no contrast injection so the scan should be a half an hour which I am cool with. I hear the door open after 20 minutes and I am like great get me outta here. Only to be told we are doing a contrast. I tell you professional patients like me know what we always get. So after waiting for the nurse to show up and shoot me up they put me back in the tube. So they put me back in which seemed like forever. I am not kidding it was like at least a 45 minute scan total. Oh but the best part is the mind tricks the machine did to my still drug induced state, of course I was getting like lets go already, but if you have ever been in that tube the magnet makes a racket. So I hear it “saying” “It’s bad, It’s bad, It’s bad, It’s bad, It’s bad, It’s bad” for like a couple of minutes so my paranoia is peaking now. And then we go into this like 5 minute scan where the table shakes that I am laying on so now they are shaking my head, which let me tell you is not solid yet. So my skull is shaking and I swear the magnet this whole time has been ever so slightly moving my staples. H-E-A-D-A-C-H-E. So eventually like all good tortures it comes to an end and the radiologist and I do our one handed dance off the table and into my wheel chair. So now I go back out into the hallway waiting for transport back to my room. Someone walked by and said see-ya. I was like I’ll be back in 3 months. So my head is all achy, I just want to crawl up, I think this for whatever reason was one of the worst times of my stay having to be wheeled through the lobby seeing peoples who’s biggest problem was drinking Starbucks coffee before it got cold, my head hurt I was lonely and still drug induced. I get back to the room, and back in my chair. I remember it was broad daylight and I was in the room alone, I heard a voice come from nowhere in a whisper say, “You’re OK”. I was like huh. But that was it. I decided right there and then to take that statement over the MRI torture.
10:15 PM
|
|
| |
|
|
|
