Staples Out!

I got my Staples out yesterday and it was such a relief. The nurse said it may zing and to yell obscenties if I must, but I just sighed in relief like when you've been holding you bladder for hours and finally get to go. They don't itch anymore and I can brush my hair without catching on them.etc Yay! Also - I can pull my hair back over them and have them be hardly visible! I'm on my way to healing. I have an occipital nerve block procedure scheduled for next Tuesday, so hopefully that will extinguish that pain and I'll be feeling so much better and be so much more pain free.

Photo update

My hair is growing back quickly, and I get my staples out tomorrow. Just in time too as they're getting very red and angry looking. In the mean time till I can get that occipital nerve block my doctor gave me a numbing shot in the general area. It helps the pain when I'm just being, but still hurts when I touch it (duh, don't touch it), lie on it, or turn my head to the right. It hurt somewhat, but could have been worse. I'm going through meds like crazy. I've almost gone through 80mg of Valium in the last week, and am going through Neurontin even faster. Need refills. As I've been going through so many meds, I'm tired ALL the time. Ugh. So tired I'm going to end this post already, not that it matters as I have only 2 readers, so goodnight Dad and Aunt Terry.

Occipital Nerve Pain

So I went to see the nurse practitioner about this horrible scalp-pulling pain. She poked my head a bit and concluded that I'm suffering from 'left occipital nerve pain'. Basically when they cut through my scalp they had to sever several nerves in the process. Most of these were of little consequence and have left my head just feeling numb like when your feet fall asleep from sitting too long. One of the nerves however, was my occipital nerve, which, while I don't know what it does, is a big nerve that curls around the head like a rams horn. The result of this is when I move my head that sliced nerve gets aggravated and it feels like some one's trying to scalp me. I'm considering a nerve block injection (seeing if insurance even covers it first), which has debate over how much it works. For some people it works, for others it doesn't, but unanimously, it hurts like hell. For now I'm trying Neurontin, a seizure medication that also works for nerve pain, and hoping that it helps and I don't even need the nerve block.
Aside from that, the right hand muscles in my neck keep spasming. I have no appetite, probably from the enormous amount of narcotics I'm taking scheduled. Chewing hurts. Laying down hurts. When I lay on the back of my head I hear an unwholesome crunching sound. I told the nurse practitioner about this who's response is "Yeah, we've heard that before but don't know what to tell you". My bottom most staple is all wiggly like a loose tooth and due to my OCD I feel compelled to pull it out but won't because it would probably hurt like hell. And when I'm up walking or sitting in the car I get to wear a lovely neck brace that though stabilizes my head, also sort of chokes me.

Photo Update:

Surgery and Hospital Stay

On August 4th at 1:30pm, I had surgery. I arrived at the hospital early to receive fluids early because I was very ill from dehydration. I changed into a gown, got an IV started, and watched TV for 3.5 hours till my time came. I met with the anesthesiologist, several nurses, someone who was monitoring my nervous system, my surgeon, and his nurse practitioner. I remember being wheeled into the O.R., being given something, and the anesthesiologist telling me I was about to get really tired. Next thing I knew I'm waking up in the ICU with a nurse asking me to rate my pain on a scale of 1-10. It took me several moments to even process the question. I didn't feel pain at all actually.

The surgeon came in and said everything went well. My right lobe was a lot bigger than the left apparently, and he did succeed on putting the titanium plate in. There was a risk I wouldn't get the plate if my skull was thinner than 5mm or else the screws would penetrate through the bone and touch my brain. Now if I do something stupid I can write it off as literally having a screw loose.

The first night in the ICU was the best and the worst. The best in that there were nurses doting on my every need keeping me super fucked up on dilaudid, valium, and toradol. It was also the worst in the sense of the catheter that had been placed during surgery. I'd never had one before and didn't even know I had it till I tried to scoot into an upright position and felt like my bladder was being ripped out. From that point on I was begging the nurse to take it out, promising that I felt well enough to get up to pee. She said no. It was torture. Eventually from all my complaining I made her break at 4:00am and she conceded. After that I slept well till about 7am when the surgeons nurse came in to check on me. There's something almost violating about sleeping soundly to be awoken by someone you hardly know in some strange place and feeling all disoriented and confused. I had to stop and think "Where am I??? What day is it??? Who are you??? Why does my head hurt???"

Back to sleep - then an hour later Peter arrived to check on me.

Back to sleep - then I'm awoken by someone bringing me breakfast. Soggy french toast with syrup in a plastic tube, apple juice, black coffee, and a piece of turkey bacon that though I didn't eat, I hear tasted like play-doh and salt. I was hooked up to a device that gave me dilaudid whenever I pushed a button (as long as it was at least 8 minutes apart), and survived the oncoming pain by that.

That day and next night are a complete haze. My only vivid memories pertain to going for a couple walks with the physical therapists, and getting up to pee using the shared bathroom with the patient next door with the doors that don't lock. Didn't so much care for that.

The next afternoon I was transferred out of the ICU and into the regular hospital. This time I had my own bathroom and a larger TV. I was given a menu to order food from, but by this point I was too nauseated that two bites of food and I was done. The dilaudid was no longer self administered, and given in greater amounts less frequently. It made my whole body itch so I had to be given benadryl IV as well. All these medicines pumping in through my left hand for three days left my vein feeling like it was going to explode. It burned, ached, and stung even with just saline. Luckily I had a great nurse after this point who changed out the IV and would pull up a chair and give me the injections slowly over the course of 5 minutes instead of pushing it through in 30 seconds. We talked about medicine and animals. He has horses, and a dog with a leg brace. I intend on writing a letter to the hospital about how gentle, friendly, and compassionate he was.

That night I slept well until 7am when I was awoken by the surgeons nurse again. She cut right to the chase and asked if I'd had a bowel movement yet. I said no, and tried to reason with her that since I had gone the morning before surgery, and had hardly eaten while I was there, that I didn't have to go, but she was adamant about it and ordered me a suppository and a bottle of magnesium citrate. She was not my favorite person after that. The suppository - though it worked somewhat - was really uncomfortable and painful, and for some reason I wasn't allowed to just try one or the other, I had to have both, so where the suppository worked in about 30 minutes, the citrate took a lot longer and made me just puke my guts up all afternoon. I don't know who invented that crap, but carbonated lemon juice that results in diarrhea and projectile vomiting? Really? That person should burn in hell.

P.S. - I did have to disgustingly preserve my feces as evidence that I didn't have an obstruction.

That night I felt much better, and around 9pm I was discharged. I'm glad too because the night nurse had just come on and I had a feeling she didn't know what the hell she was doing. She pulled the IV out in the most painful way possible, and didn't know which papers were mine and which were the hospitals. I got home and went straight to bed, and slept somewhat peacefully. I missed the feeling of the dog thrashing about in her sleep while laying on top of my legs.

Today has been up and down. I'm trying to keep active like the doctor said by doing some aisles at Target and going for walks with Peter and Zia. I can't walk Zia just in case she pulls and I strain myself. Nor can I open the heavy doors of the building. Or bend over to pick things up without getting dizzy, but I shall recover.

Something I didn't anticipate was how much my scalp hurts. Combing (or even touching) my hair hurts, and turning my head the the right feels like someones yanking on the top left portion of my scalp. I'm paranoid about accidentally pulling out one of my 24 staples if it gets caught on my pillow or something, and I still have no appetite. When I go out children look on in horror, as do some adults, and I so badly want someone to ask me what happened so I can say something like how I used to telekineticly set people on fire by accident and had it corrected.

Now for some fun pictures:

The back of my head!

Close up of incisions and staples

The Morning Of Surgery

I'm having surgery in 5 hours. I've been up for the past 2 hours, sleeping a total of about 3 hours last night. I felt prepared. I had come to terms with the possibility of being the one in five that doesn't get relief, I had come to terms with the horrible pain I will feel when I wake up. I had thought about the possibility of something going wrong, and about something going horribly wrong. Overall, I had felt positive and confident about whatever may come my way.

Last night, that all went away.

I've been so nervous about so many things that I couldn't sleep much. Feeling worried about the moment I wake up - what if I'm alone and in horrible pain and can't call someone. What if something goes wrong. What if I woke up during surgery. That's a big one that kept me up. The thought of something going wrong with the anesthesia and waking up while they're drilling into my skull but being too incapacitated to get any ones attention. I know these are all very unlikely, but I've had unlikeliness happen to me before.

I have not been allowed to eat or drink after midnight and do not think I've ever felt this sick and dehydrated. I'm sure it's partially nerves but nerves or not, I've been dry-heaving, wishing desperately to vomit, for the past hour. My head is hurting but I'm trying to not take pain meds because I just know they'll make my stomach feel worse. I called my surgeons office during the on-call hours this morning to see if I could even have some ice chips. I'm holding the phone in my hand waiting for it to ring me back but it doesn't. I count the minutes that go by. 5. 10. 15. 20. At 24 minutes I call back. Maybe the answering service took my phone number down wrong. Nope. But she'll re-try the page. Who's on call by the way who's not calling me back? Oh, it's my doctor. The guy who will be drilling into my skull later. An astounding vote of confidence goes out to him. It's now been 31 minutes in total and no call back. "Maybe he's already in surgery for the day" I try to assure myself. But then, isn't it a slightly retarded idea to have him be the one on call?

So I wait. Typing here trying to vent my frustrations with a bucket on my lap just in case one of these dry heaves manages to produce something. I doubt it though. I feel like my insides are made of sand. I've gone much longer than this without drinking something, but knowing that I CAN'T drink anything until I wake up from surgery in probably 9 hours makes it unbearable.

My cat jumps on my desk and tries climbing into my puke-bucket being all cute. I notice he has water droplets on his whiskers and feel envious of him. I'm jealous of a cat right now. Fail.

41 minutes and no call back. In 19 minutes the office will be open and I can talk to the receptionist and then hopefully one of the nurses. I'm trying to plan out my morning, allotting as much time as possible to things like showering and walking the dog to make the time go faster. My head is hurting and I feel dreadful.

Call already!