A Day on the Town

Our day started early.  We were up and on the road this morning at 7:30 after enjoying a lovely complimentary breakfast at the hotel consisting of some kind of prefab circular... egg... thing on an english muffin with a slap of meat product that I think was sausage - the Comfort Inn version of an Egg McMuffin no doubt.  Unfortunately we only got about half way to the hospital when we realized that we had forgotten Tina's meds despite being reminded that she needed to bring them, so we had to turn around and go back to the hotel to get them.  Needless to say we arrived at 8:15 for Tina's 8:00 MRI that we were supposed to arrive at 15 minutes early.

The MRI went well, Tina's anti-seizure meds had kicked in by the time they were feeding her into the machine and she was feeling the customary sleepiness that comes with them (yes even at 8:30 in the morning after a full nights sleep she's ready for a nap).  The MRI tech was quite surprised when, after the 50 minute MRI was complete, Tina had fallen asleep and asked if she could be left in for a few more minutes.  The tech had never heard that one before.  Interestingly enough we talked to the neuro-surgeon's nurse tonight (yes we have her home phone number) and she said that the surgeon was very excited about Tina's MRI.  Apparently he's never seen an MRI that was that good - no one can lay that still.  Leave it to Tina to out perform the average MRI-Joe by falling asleep in the MRI machine that's so loud that you have to wear earplugs.  Tonight the nurse said that the surgeon was so excited this afternoon talking through Tina's surgery tomorrow that he can hardly wait to get to it, and she said, "the surgeon never gets excited."  Hope he can get to sleep tonight...

After Tina's MRI she had an appointment with  pre-op testing.  They did the normal vital checks, read through all of the medical forms, yada, yada, yada.... then sent us up for Tina to get a chest X-ray.  The neuro-surgeon's nurse had asked us to call her when we were done with Tina's appointments so she and the surgeon could talk to us.  I had called her cell a couple times but didn't get her so we went to the neuro-surgery department and had her paged.  She came out and got us and it was like reunion time.  We sat and talked for a bit about life and kids, and that kind of stuff then she realized that she had forgotten to grab Tina's chart from the desk.  When she went up to get it the people at the reception desk didn't think Tina had a chart because they just assumed we were just "dropping by" from out of town to see her personally.  The nurse assured them that in spite of our familiarity Tina was definitely a patient and they were able to dig up her chart.

Eventually we sat down with the surgeon as well and talked through the procedure for tomorrow.  It was pretty straight forward, nothing we hadn't done before...at least a few times.  He told us that he would be doing the craniotomy (removing the skull) in a different location than before because in the process of going through this the last time they were able to determine that her seizure focus was further back on her brain so they would be placing the grid of electrodes on her brain further back than before.

In the end everyone is very optimistic.  The surgeon was almost giddy - and if you ever met the surgeon you'd know that's saying something - but he was pretty optimistic about the possibility that they will be able to pinpoint exactly where Tina's seizures are coming from and that the part of her brain they suspect that location to be is a very safe part of the brain to operate on.  What that means is they are very comfortable with removing a larger section of her brain without the risk of adverse effects on Tina.  The larger the section they can take out the more likely Tina will be to be seizure free post surgery.  That is good news and we are guardedly optimistic.

After meeting with the surgeon we decided to make a pass through the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU) which is the unit that Tina spent all of her 5+ weeks last time.  It was like homecoming.  In all there might have been 2 people on today that we didn't know.  It only took about 10 seconds in the unit and a party broke out in the hallway.  Everyone was excited to see us and they had all heard that we were coming back.  In fact they had already been in the process of getting Tina's room all setup for her.  Yes it will be the same room we were in last time - Tina wouldn't want it any other way.  When we first got there everyone recognized me before they recognized Tina - none of them had ever seen Tina with hair, so I said Tina should have wrapped a towel around her head before hand and then they would have recognized her.  It was certainly an answer to prayer that there were so many familiar faces there.  We had hoped that the people we had gotten to know so well the last time would still be there, and it really put us at ease when they were.  Not only that, but that they were genuinely excited to see us, which is so reassuring to Tina.

By the time we left the EMU it was getting to be early afternoon and Tina wanted to know if I wanted to eat in the hospital cafeteria - not funny.  After eating 3 meals a day for 5+ weeks in the hospital cafeteria, never will be too soon to eat there again.  Instead we had lunch at Jimmy Johns and then went back to our hotel for a few hours.  We decided to go back out and catch dinner and a movie and enjoy some time on the town before Tina's life gets restricted to the same 15 square feet in the EMU for the next who knows how long.

In all it was a good day.  Tina is feeling pretty wiped out tonight and was already fast asleep by 9:30.  It will be an early morning tomorrow, although not as early for me as it would be if I was doing Men's Fraternity in the morning (sorry Tim, Steve, and Mike).  We need to be at the hospital shortly after 6:00 as she'll be the first case of the day.  I'm not exactly sure what time she'll go into surgery but, as I've done in the past, I'll throw up a quick blog post letting everyone know when she's gone into surgery and when she's back out.

Once again we would ask that you would pray for God's hand to guide the surgeon (Dr. Miller) and his nurses, and that Tina would recover quickly from the surgery with little pain.  However, more than anything else we would ask that you would pray that God's glory would be put on display through us and this situation and that all those involved will know that there is indeed a God in heaven who cares deeply for his creation.