home

We're home. :) Actually, we got here yesterday but it was just one big blur of pain, sleep and trying to eat. Hospitals are definitely not conducive to rest and healing like you'd expect them to be but I will give them kudos for pain management. Pain management at home is not so easy. On the way home, we dropped off my prescription, Paul brought me here and then went back to pick it up because my dose from the hospital was pretty much out. It probably only took him 15 minutes to get there and back but it felt like five hours and once I took it, it took about an hour for it to do any good at all. A problem with pain meds at home: nausea. Because of this crazy frustrating tongue/speech problem I'm having, it's been hard to eat much. So, basically we've been crushing up the pain pills in some apple juice (hard to swallow the pills alone) and sometimes I take a benadryl shortly after that. Today's been better though. I successfully ate a few spoonfuls of oatmeal for breakfast and I just finished a full serving of applesauce and some chicken. It's easier with the little "techniques" the speech language pathologist gave me.

The tongue/speech thing feels a little better today. I've been able to eat and swallow a little better but talking is a lot harder (mostly because of my voice though) which is just really frustrating. Since it is a little bit better today, I'm hopeful that the nerve wasn't actually clipped and that it's "healing" from being stretched out. Time will tell, I guess.

I don't think I mentioned any of the details yesterday... when I was in recovery, here are some of the things the nurses were saying, either to each other or to me: "... tachycardia... yep, it's a little 'tachy'," "honey, they had to cut off the blood supply to your brain," "...attached to the carotid... got a piece from your leg..." That's really all I remember, other than my leg hurting and my right hand hurting from the new (and humongous, by the way) IV they put in while I was asleep. Apparently this was the first time my surgeon had ever seen this happen with this kind of tumor (fused with the wall of the artery, I mean) so it's "interesting."

I go back on the 8th to the vascular surgeon so (I think) they can do an ultrasound of the area and make sure the vessels are healing properly. And then I'll go back to my surgeon at the end of the month for a general check-in.

Haven't really felt like being on the computer much so posting will probably be down unless that changes. Maybe I'll finish answering some of those questions from you guys (you can still ask if you think of a new one).

Until then, I see a lot of reading and Netflix in my future.