Brain Surgery Hurts!

Jodi has decided that brain surgery is painful. For some reason the nurses in the ICU couldn’t get orders for the pain medication to come through the system so they kept Jodi waiting for pain meds for four hours last night after her surgery, and she wasn’t too happy about that. She didn’t get much sleep last night due to the pain and also due to the fact that her week old IV closed up and they kept blowing the veins trying to insert a new one. Finally, Jodi just insisted they leave her alone so they gave up on the new IV. Another factor contributing to the lack of sleep was the man down the hall screaming for hours at a time about the pain he was in. The nurse mentioned that it is motorcycle season and they have been especially busy since the weather warmed up. She said in the last few days the hospital has had a bunch of head trauma injuries.

Jodi got up this morning to use the bathroom and got another sever spinal headache but the doctors explained that is to be expected due to the CSF loss associated with the surgery. Overall Jodi is doing pretty well. This morning they moved her from the ICU back to the Neuro Acute Care unit (now room #1) where she slept most of the day. She was also feeling good enough to get up and walk around a bit this afternoon. We spoke with Dr. Shelton this evening and he suggested we may want to have a gold bar inserted into Jodi’s right eye lid to help it close. That is something we will consider. He also explained what the next steps would be if the CSF leak reoccurs. Later, Dr. Couldwell stopped by and he mentioned that if Jodi continues to do well he will remove the lumbar drain tomorrow and Jodi may be able to go home Thursday. That’s what we are hoping for!