Surgery part one

Long overdue post, but recovering from brain surgery takes a long time.  A lot longer than I thought, but that will come later.  Now I will just tell everyone what happened with surgery.  About 2 days before we were graced with yet another crazy snow storm that left several people asking me if the surgery was even going to happen.  Friday night I had gotten the call that I needed to be at the hospital at 11 am.  Normally the trip would take 2 hours max in traffic, but since we had gotten slammed with snow and some roads were not even cleared, we left around  6am. The trip took three hours.  However getting to the hospital at 9:30 am instead of 11am was nice.  Things were able to be taken slower which was crazy because things still moved really fast.  

There was the joy of intake, and getting blood drawn for some testing (where I told the nurse she was "magical!" for getting  blood on painless  first stick.)  Since we were their early there was a small amout of waiting for a bed but that gave us time to talk and relax which really helped me.  Soon enough I called back and changed into a sexy hospital gown.  Once settled into the bed the IV was attempted but the tech took one look at my arms and said, "yea I am called NICU."  My once awesome veins had decided to stick it to the man... the entire time I was in the hospital, which lead to NICU being called more than once.  Alas, after several warming pads and some skill from NICU my IV was in, in one stick.  There they started to push fluid and a bunch of different pre-meds.  From there I meet a LOT of people.  "Hi I am a doctor assisting Dr. K", "hi I am another Dr. assisting him."  I am the anesthesiologist."  "I am the other anesthesiologist and I am the nurse and the nurse assistant them." There was also several head nurses and finally Dr. K himself.  Despite the fact that I was having brain surgery I was still being the same goofy self and cracking jokes and making nurses and doctors smile.  When Dr. K came into the room I had ask if he had seen Monsters Inc. (He has 8 kids I believe) when he said yes I told him I was calling today "put that thing back where it came from day."  

He laughed and than asked if he could pray over me which was awesome.  After that the people that came with me came up but really did not stay long because about 5 minutes later I was wisked off to the operating room.

This was the moment when the first bit of fear started to creep in, but the people who were taking me in were great at keeping me talking about asking what movies I have seen and what I like to read and watch.  When I was pushed into the operating room I could not believe the amount of people that were in there.  I also for the first time got a good look some images of my brain.  The last thing I remember is saying. "COOL!!! So that is what my brain looks like, no one showed me!"  To which there was a good deal of laughing and chuckles and then they knocked me out.  

The surgery lasted 3 hours, and I was in recovery for about 2 and a half hours before I was moved to Neuro ICU.  I did not wake up until I was in the ICU and it was no longer daylight.  The ICU was rough.  Of course there was pain, but you  can never prepare yourself for that pain.  I could not lay on the back of my head because my head, neck and face were we swollen, partly from the surgery itself and partly because the surgery was preformed face down.  I could also not get comfortable on my side (until the superhero came).  Every time the nurses tried to move me I would throw up all over myself.  I was still on oxygen, So every time it happened the had to replace the oxygen tubes in my nose, clean my IV and hand, and clean me and change my gown.  My "superhero" came in to form of a tech who I later found out is studying the be a nurse.  Lets just say he is going to be an amazing nurse.  They had been struggling all night to get my comfortable so I could sleep and also not throw up in the process.  He came in and amazingly was able to move me without pain or vomiting and I slept for about 4 hours straight.  The next day I was able to go off the oxygen by late afternoon and by the evening was moved out of the ICU to my own private room, which was nice because let's just say my ICU roommate was a rough one for everyone involved.  Next post will be surgery part 2 my time out of ICU and recovery up to this point.  

There were over 33 stitches... we stopped counting after that and more kept coming up. This is a about 4 days after the surgery.  No the back of my head no longer looks like this, this was swelling and major fluid build up.  It also reminds me of Sloth from the Goonies.