At one point I thought mom might move to St. Luke's in Cedar Rapids for transitional care today, but it didn't quite work out. When we go, she will travel in the van with us and we are concerned about the ride. She is nauseous and has trouble just when we move around in the wheelchair, so we wonder how well the car trip will go. However, brother Michael, dad and I all agree that she doesn't seem to be making progress here and we think she will get much better much more quickly once someone can get her up and moving more. It's a balance between keeping her comfortable and keeping her motivated to push herself and her recovery forward. The three of us make a good team because we bring three different perspectives together. I'm glad we are all here close so that we can work through this together.
I've had questions about visitors and there is a balance to do there also. When visitors come, she really perks up and seems more like herself which is great. However there are days and activities that really wear her out and she needs her rest. Once we get to St. Luke's she will have a more consistent and set schedule of physical therapy and if might be easier to schedule visits at that time. I read mom all of the emails, blog comments and cards that come in and she appreciates them all.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Some background
I realize that this might be the first you are hearing about mom's health issues, so let me give you some background on how we got here.
Mom has had some problems with dizziness and she has been seeing an Ear-Nose-Throat doctor for some time. In this process there have been various tests including a CT scan but physical therapy seems to be the best thing for helping the dizzy spells. Most recently in this process the ENT recommended an MRI just to make sure everything was OK, and this is when we first learned of the tumor. That happened at the end of June and at first they said it would be 6 weeks until August 15th before a neurologist could even see her to discuss the scan.
Fortunately we were able to get in early and saw Dr. Greenlee at UIHC here in town on July 20th. He explained where the tumor was and what our options were. The tumor is about the size of a nickle on the left side of her brain. It is about 1.5 inches deep into the brain, but we were told there was a very safe and clear pathway to get to it and get it out. We could have waited three months for another scan, but we decided that "that thing" didn't belong there and we were going to take it out.
On July 27th we came in for the 6 hour surgery. It went very well and there were no surprises or complications during surgery. They were able to remove the entire thing, and sent it to pathology. We are hoping at the end of this week we will get the results. The tumor is a meningioma which is typically benign. Based on the location, the tumor was probably not the reason for the dizziness in the first place, but it's still nice to get it out. (We'll deal with the dizziness later.)
Right after surgery mom was already awake and making jokes with us which was great. She spent that first night in surgical ICU (which we expected) and the next morning she moved to a regular hospital bed. Since then there has been a little progress each day, but we are always hoping that it could go a bit more quickly because we want her to be back to herold young self again!
Mom has had some problems with dizziness and she has been seeing an Ear-Nose-Throat doctor for some time. In this process there have been various tests including a CT scan but physical therapy seems to be the best thing for helping the dizzy spells. Most recently in this process the ENT recommended an MRI just to make sure everything was OK, and this is when we first learned of the tumor. That happened at the end of June and at first they said it would be 6 weeks until August 15th before a neurologist could even see her to discuss the scan.
Fortunately we were able to get in early and saw Dr. Greenlee at UIHC here in town on July 20th. He explained where the tumor was and what our options were. The tumor is about the size of a nickle on the left side of her brain. It is about 1.5 inches deep into the brain, but we were told there was a very safe and clear pathway to get to it and get it out. We could have waited three months for another scan, but we decided that "that thing" didn't belong there and we were going to take it out.
On July 27th we came in for the 6 hour surgery. It went very well and there were no surprises or complications during surgery. They were able to remove the entire thing, and sent it to pathology. We are hoping at the end of this week we will get the results. The tumor is a meningioma which is typically benign. Based on the location, the tumor was probably not the reason for the dizziness in the first place, but it's still nice to get it out. (We'll deal with the dizziness later.)
Right after surgery mom was already awake and making jokes with us which was great. She spent that first night in surgical ICU (which we expected) and the next morning she moved to a regular hospital bed. Since then there has been a little progress each day, but we are always hoping that it could go a bit more quickly because we want her to be back to her
Tuesday Morning Update
Hello everyone,
I'm trying to balance keeping everyone informed but I don't want to fill your inbox with more information than you can handle, so I thought I blog might work nicely. This way you can check this site if you are wondering how things are going and I don't have to worry about pestering you with too many updates. If you have questions or if I go too long without updating, please feel free to email or call and we will fill you in. We spend a lot of time just sitting so we don't mind fielding calls and emails.
As you know mom had surgery Friday to remove a tumor (meningioma?) from her brain. Recovery has been a little slower than we would have liked, but we do see progress each day. We have two big concerns right now: mobility and vision.
Mobility: She is up and walking with a walker, but the furthest she has made it is from the bed to the door (20 feet?) and back. By physical therapists' reports it seems as though she has enough strength in her legs to walk, but she gets a little dizzy and swoons which makes her want to sit down. She is also suffering from a big headache and that prevents her from being maybe as mobile as she is capable of. However she is medically much recovered from the surgery - she no longer has any tubes hooked up to her, so they are thinking of discharging her from the surgical unit and sending her to St. Luke's in Cedar Rapids for some transitional rehab to get her strength up. It sounds like a very good facility with a lot of cool rehab stuff (a car to practice getting in and out of, uneven sidewalks and grassy areas to practice walking on, a mock supermarket isle to practice with... and it's well funded by some generous donors, so that's great) We might go there as soon as today, or it might be later this week, we'll see.
Vision: Mom has some blind spots especially on her right side (surgery was on the left side). We tried yesterday and today to get to the vision clinic to do some baseline tests to just measure where she is at, but mom's stomach hasn't let her get through the test yet. It turns out the test is just to get a baseline and it wouldn't lead to any treatment anyway. It would be great if we can do the test before going to St. Luke's but if it doesn't happen that's OK. For now time is the best medicine and we are very hopeful that the vision loss is caused by normal swelling and bleeding caused by the surgery and that her vision will come back as that goes down. However there is a chance that it is permanent and mom will have to make adjustments to be able to work with just one good eye.
I've been holding off on sharing some of this less good news because I had hoped these problems would just go away on their own. I still think they might, but it's worth adding a few things to your good thoughts and prayers list to keep those good vibes coming.
I'll keep you posted,
Melissa (Linda's favorite daughter)
I'm trying to balance keeping everyone informed but I don't want to fill your inbox with more information than you can handle, so I thought I blog might work nicely. This way you can check this site if you are wondering how things are going and I don't have to worry about pestering you with too many updates. If you have questions or if I go too long without updating, please feel free to email or call and we will fill you in. We spend a lot of time just sitting so we don't mind fielding calls and emails.
As you know mom had surgery Friday to remove a tumor (meningioma?) from her brain. Recovery has been a little slower than we would have liked, but we do see progress each day. We have two big concerns right now: mobility and vision.
Mobility: She is up and walking with a walker, but the furthest she has made it is from the bed to the door (20 feet?) and back. By physical therapists' reports it seems as though she has enough strength in her legs to walk, but she gets a little dizzy and swoons which makes her want to sit down. She is also suffering from a big headache and that prevents her from being maybe as mobile as she is capable of. However she is medically much recovered from the surgery - she no longer has any tubes hooked up to her, so they are thinking of discharging her from the surgical unit and sending her to St. Luke's in Cedar Rapids for some transitional rehab to get her strength up. It sounds like a very good facility with a lot of cool rehab stuff (a car to practice getting in and out of, uneven sidewalks and grassy areas to practice walking on, a mock supermarket isle to practice with... and it's well funded by some generous donors, so that's great) We might go there as soon as today, or it might be later this week, we'll see.
Vision: Mom has some blind spots especially on her right side (surgery was on the left side). We tried yesterday and today to get to the vision clinic to do some baseline tests to just measure where she is at, but mom's stomach hasn't let her get through the test yet. It turns out the test is just to get a baseline and it wouldn't lead to any treatment anyway. It would be great if we can do the test before going to St. Luke's but if it doesn't happen that's OK. For now time is the best medicine and we are very hopeful that the vision loss is caused by normal swelling and bleeding caused by the surgery and that her vision will come back as that goes down. However there is a chance that it is permanent and mom will have to make adjustments to be able to work with just one good eye.
I've been holding off on sharing some of this less good news because I had hoped these problems would just go away on their own. I still think they might, but it's worth adding a few things to your good thoughts and prayers list to keep those good vibes coming.
I'll keep you posted,
Melissa (Linda's favorite daughter)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)