November 2002 rediagnosed with a recurring tumor I am going to bring you through the whole fun thing
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This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
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Brain Tumor History And Other Rants
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Monday, April 11, 2005
Thursday was to be my big day of going for a walk. Heather road the bus in didn’t think it was that bad (little did she know that local on the way home would teach her). So the physical therapist came in to get me up and walking. No big deal right? OK maybe it is. Like whoa, you know that I drank a little to much that it makes one side of my body to heavy feeling. That was it. Turns out during surgery they cut right up to my left leg motor control area and that irritation was what was throwing me. So I didn’t really pick up my left leg it dragged a bit, and I leaned that way. So she was very helpful and showed Heather how to walk the old dog and to tap my shoulder when I didn’t walk straight. She loved to mess with you also, walk backwards, sideways, now walk straight turn your head to the left, now to the right, stop, so I told her no, you get the building to stop spinning around me. So then I get walked back to my chair. Stable non-moving ground this I can get used to. I rest off my exploration after being told I wasn’t the walker of the year. The Occupational therapist came in also I still had no real use of my left hand. She gave me some things to try to do, none of which my hand was willing to do yet.
Friday I got up early for my shower again. Then waited for my breakfast.
Heather drove in and was in pretty early it was always great to see her come around that curtain, my eyes would light up. She was so cute, once she was there she didn’t leave the building, to the torture of only getting meals from the cafeteria. She would get there come up and see me first, then go get something to eat, and if you know anything about the elevators there I was on the twelfth floor this was utter torture just getting up and down, then I heard the doctors have a secret way of whipping all the floor numbers out and hitting where they got to go, that’s pull.
Then my dad would showed up around noon. Then a couple friends, Liz and Claudia, showed up on their lunch which was a great surprise. I made a point of trying to always get up when friends came over so I didn’t look totally lame in that chair.
So the afternoon was pretty quiet. Lunch, dad and Heather and TV court shows. That night I had more visitors John and his wife, of course John went into the wrong hospital first where they keep the “other” head cases. I don’t know if he went there for him or me. Then Holley from my job also came and we caught up it was a busy night. I was wiped when everyone broke out.
What I did learn was being that most of the nurses worked 12 hour shifts 8-8. The hours of 7-9 were witching hours, you better not have any real needs then because no one is going to come especially outside of ICU, we were chop liver. So you had to arrange your schedule around theirs like if the nurse came with med’s, that was your only shot if you needed something, and even if you asked for it, it didn’t mean you were going to get it..
The nurses assistant’s came around for vitals by us around 5:30 am so if I wanted a shower that was when it was going to happen so at 6 am I would be getting showered up. I was just happy to be able to get out of bed and get that shower and once that happened I wasn’t getting back in bed so I would sit up in the chair from 6am – 830 pm, when I laid down I passed out.
My surgeon did stop by at the end of his day. Now this doctor was with my parents and Heather until midnight after my first surgery, Then he was in his office until 1am. He was at my bed side at 5 am the next morning. So to bring you back to the current timeline it is Thursday at 8:30 pm and he is here checking on me again. So before I went in I decided to do a little something to give back to his son, who is 16 and plays guitar. I wanted him to know that even though he has to share his dad with all his patients, that the things that his dad did for us everyday made his dad a hero.
All that mushy stuff was in a card, but what was in this soft case which looked like a gun case was the last guitar I bought to go away with a long time ago. A Martin backpacker. It is a small guitar, remember gun case with nylon strings. It just so happens that his son is going up to Alaska this summer to work with some very poor Eskimos, So this will be perfect for that trip. My surgeon who is very humble said no at first, but I think he saw how much it meant to me to give something back to him.
All of my energy gone from a day of talking and sitting. I made a few calls and left messages with what little voice I had left. I then put the IPod on 30 minutes sleep timer and was out. Up at the 5/5:30am round again.
Of course the next morning he came in quick to tell me how much his son liked it, and that he wanted to know about me, and was wowed. It still really means a lot to me that I was able to thank his son and family for their sacrifice of his time.
3:56 PM
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