Category: Milestones

One Month Mark

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I am calling today the one month mark after my surgery. I’m doing well and slowly recovering. The physical, visual aspects of the surgery are healing very well and if I’m able to get my hair to do something decent to cover the incision, one would never know I had a craniotomy a month ago.

Photo comparison from two days after surgery (left) to this morning.

FATIGUE: Fatigue is still an issue. I’m reading that the 3-month mark seems to be the time when most people start to feel they have a lot of their energy back. I need to walk more though to continue to build my energy. Also still need to rest more during the day, but it’s getting better.

By Dr. Glen Johnson, Clinical Neuropsychologist
Sleep is very important to the healing process. If you don’t sleep, you’re going to be tired throughout the day. If you’re tired throughout the day, your memory will get worse and you’ll be more cranky and irritable. Lack of sleep makes the other head injury symptoms much worse. Sleep also has an important role in physical healing.

Now I appear to be having some problems getting to sleep at night. Goody! I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open, but when I close my eyes, it’s more like a heavy “rest”, not a deep sleep. My brain seems to want to continue to “work” when I lay down at night.

PAIN:
Headaches still occur, but not with the frequency and intensity as they have previously. Usually mild pain meds take care of it…or, resting! The areas where the pins and screws are can send out mild shooting pains occasionally and if I touch the skull area it can wake up all of those nerves. I’m reading I should be able to feel the screws and pins and I think that’s what I’m feeling in one area. Not sure since the Dr. didn’t have my scans ready to show me at my 4-week follow up so I’m not sure where the pins and screws are located on my head/skull just yet.

NUMBNESS:
Oh, that’s still there and it still feels weird. The nerves are starting to heal so there’s a lot of “activity” there, especially if I touch my skull. I hear that could get more active. Those little buggers are highly sensitive. It’s not overly painful, just annoying.

STITCHES/INCISION:
The stitches are all gone and the incision is healing very well. It’s still tender and can be painful if I lay on it or accidentally scrape it with my hair brush or fingers. Umm…so, I’m trying not to do that! My hair is growing back nicely, although the hair at the top of my forehead it growing straight up. The hair along the side of my face is laying down flat. Wish I had more hair there, but I have no complaints! I love they did the incision right along my hair line. Thank you!

BRAIN FUNCTION:
Concentrating on one or more things at the same time can take a lot out of me. I DID drive briefly this week and am VERY aware that I need to concentrate and make sure I stay alert. I’ve been through this before and I know that will take time, but it always makes me nervous…and this is without after working a full day so I need to work up to feeling confident behind the wheel again.

I haven’t done a ton of reading for any great length of time, but when I do, I find it hard to focus and often times have to read the same sentence a few times to “understand” it. That only seems to happen when there is a lot of text on a page. Reading Twitter on my iPad seems to be okay. They are short snippets of text that I can read, process and move on.

Dave had me make a few minor graphic fixes to our brain aneurysm website and Facebook page. I was able to work on those on the computer, but did have a brain fade on where a certain tool was located that I needed to use in Photoshop. Again…I know that will get better with more frequency.

As I stated under the Fatigue bullet, when I get tired during recovery, concentrating and staying focused are more difficult. Been there….done that.

The physical healing is a good visual confirmation that I’m getting better, it’s the internal, brain healing that takes time. I need to be more patient with myself – as do others.

We had a rare, warm February day out today. Sunny, light winds and just beautiful. I had to get some fresh air. Being cooped up in the house in the winter is brutal…too much risk of falling down and hitting my head in icy conditions. The back deck was cleared of snow, so I sat on the back step and let the warmth of the sun wash over my face. I listened to the chickadees and gold finches flutter around me to the feeders and watch the ducks on the now-open water on the stream. I’m reminded of how fragile life is and how lucky I am to even be here. I might complain, I might get frustrated with the slow recovery process, but life is good.

Fresh Air

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Yesterday was a breath of fresh air…literally! It finally warmed up enough and wasn’t horribly windy or icy outside, so I took a short walk down the road and back with Dave as my crutch. Then we filled the bird feeders. It was chilly, but that fresh, cool air in my lungs felt great.

I think one of the reasons I get a little bit dizzy inside when I walk is that I have to turn around so much and if I get walking too quickly I turn around too quickly. When we walked outside, I could just go straight…and it was much easier. So I should either walk outside or go slower inside, especially when turning. Makes sense.

As we were walking into the house the phone was ringing. It was my fellow aneurysm survivor Lori, from Florida calling to check in on me. She had been reading my blog and wanted to let me know a few things. One was that my numb head could be that way for months until all of those nerves that were cut get aligned back up and heal. I get to look forward to prickly feelings! It was so nice of her to call and it’s certainly a comfort to speak to someone who’s gone through it and knows what you’re experiencing.

Then, while I was in phone mode, I gave mom a call and checked in with her, then had some lunch. Needless to say, I was pooped.

However, I’ve been craving scones for some time now and knew I had a scone mix in the pantry, so I thought I’d mix those up before collapsing for the rest of the day. There are literally 4 ingredients to the scones. The mix, one egg, butter and milk. They are SO easy and quite tasty, but wow, did cutting the butter in cause pure exhaustion. I took my time, but it took a LOT of time. LOL

15 minutes later I had fresh scones and I DID eat them with a nice cup of tea and some marmalade, then hit the love seat and crashed. Dave made some more stew for dinner and it hit the spot later.

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Outside! Finally. The killer scones.

 

VIDEO: One Week Update

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One Day: Post-Clipping

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Friday all day was rough. Sick to stomach most of the night until we were able to get it calmed down with drugs. Finally able to eat something and keep it down early Friday morning, but it was only very bland hospital oatmeal and apples sauce. Not a hell of a lot of nourishment, but it stayed down, so that was an accomplishment.

Not able to eat much that requires a lot of chewing due to sore jaw. That was something I wasn’t expecting – cutting the jaw muscle.

Looks like I went 12 rounds with Mike Tyson and he won.

Face is getting a bit more swollen and left eye is starting to close up. Head pain is coming and going. Taking lots of pills, but having trouble getting comfortable in the hospital bed because I have the automatic compression socks on both legs and their wires and weight make it hard to sleep on side. I can only sleep on one side anyway.

The staff in the 608 ward is fantastic as usual. And boy, they have to be a special breed. Two men needed special care in the ware and all the while the older woman next to me was having serious mental issues and cried most of the night and went on and on about how she couldn’t get her coffee until 7 a.m. when breakfast was ordered. Drove me nuts, but nothing I could do about it.

Dr. Ecker visited this morning and did a short exam and said the swelling was completely normal and that he got some great pics of both aneurysms and got all of the 2nd smaller aneurysm with a great clipping job. Love him.

The catheter was taken out at 6 this morning so I now had to get up and walk myself to the bathroom…with a walker. An occupational therapist visited mid-morning and we attempted to go for a walk with my walker, but we didn’t get too far. I was really shaky and just not up for it, as much as I wanted to. With very little food and more drugs in my system, it wasn’t going to happen. She said she’s stop by on Saturday to see how I was doing, so I had my work cut out for me.

Thankfully lunch was coming up and I was feeling good, so I ordered the backed mac and cheese and OH, that was good and hit the spot. Also a fruit cup. All stayed down and in the afternoon Dave and I took a good walk around the floor. Pooped me out, but felt good to get out and up. Had some pretty good head pain today and that required more pain meds.

I had a great dinner…even by hospital standards. Meatloaf and gravy and steamed broccoli and milk. Tasted soooo good and it all stayed down. Dave and I then did 4 laps around the floor, which was great. I felt good, but tired after that and I wasn’t nearly as wobbly as I was this morning. Things were looking up.

Dave, as usual has been my angel getting me GOOD tea from down in the cafeteria instead of the crappy stuff that comes from the kitchen and even some cookies. He stayed overnight in Portland last night and was there very early this morning. I made him go home early because I was tired and it appeared the night nurse tonight wasn’t particularly in the mood for hangers-on who weren’t patients.

Every two to four hours, I’d get my vital statistics taken and they’d do a neurological testing for my vision and balance. I believe I was doing all of those okay. Just needed to get up more. I was still drinking a lot of water which meant I had to get up and go to the bathroom more frequently, which was a pain because I was still hooked up to a few things, an IV tree and vital statistics monitor.

Thankfully, the IV was stopped in the evening, so one less thing hooked up to me.