Loni's Life

It's been a little over 5 months since that ruptured brain aneurysm.. and my neurosurgeon prefers to run a diagnostic cerebral angiogram to check on the vessels and the coils around the 5-6 month mark and again at 12 months. So this was the week... I went in on Wednesday for it with Mama C as my guardian and chauffeur.. right smack in the middle of Holy Week too...oops.. but she made it work. Before we left home, we stripped down to my knitting, my cell phone & charger, my driver's license, and insurance card...  we had a back with a change of clothes and pajamas just in case. The staff at Presbyterian Dallas were great - from the Admissions team, to the pre-surgery check-in team, the pre-op team, the op-team, the recovery team, and the post-recovery/discharge team.  We arrived before our 11AM check-in for the 1:30PM procedure.  I gave the admissions desk my license and insurance card and got a restaurant pager in return.   Not long afterwards, my page...

By Wed Nov 1st, I got my ticket OUT of the ICU and into a regular room overnight.. my brother came and spent dinner and a little while with me in the new room.  Chicken fajitas were quite yummy.    Then we were just in a waiting game as to if I'd be released on Thur or Friday.    I think we were all kind of thinking Friday - after all they had just been in my brain on Monday... but turns out Dr. M was ready to set me loose on Thursday..  boy, when the hospital has the discharge orders, they are ready for you to Get Out.  Mama C was dealing with the funeral for Ms. Marie and honestly, I think Snarky was afraid my head would explode on the drive home.  My brother was working.  Fortunately, BFF was able to come fetch me at around lunch time in her brand new car..  i was still a little queasy.. and truthfully, with every bump in the road, the angry bees in my head were taking flight.. i was praying that we could just make it to my hou...

So during my stay in the ICU, the morning doppler exams showed that the velocity in the blood vessels in my brain were not what Dr. M wanted to see, so I had to undergo a 2nd angiogram while in the hospital. the prep for that sucks since it's nothing by mouth after midnight.. so it's basically chow down on some dinner- which at this point I was still nauseated more often than not - and then no liquids by mouth.. like why then does the Sahara Desert decide to take residence in your mouth... luckily, i was able to swirl and spit a few times. I remember going down to the neuro-suite and meeting a new crew of OR folks.. I remember getting back to the room and being cold but nurse Jodi (who did her first travel nursing assignment at Timken Mercy in Canton OH) wouldn't let me have more blankets because my temperature was too high... and Mama C fed me I think potato soup and maybe vanilla pudding.  I know that night I was having a heck of a panic attack and was in tears - whic...

I must admit that I did have more than a few George Bailey, It's a Wonderful Life kind of moments while I was in the ICU. One of which was when the workplace florist shoppe started appearing... it was flowers, flowers, everywhere... but what they didn't really explain to me was that you can't have flowers in your ICU room due to space.. so pretty much all the nearby Nurses Stations were filled with flowers from the oh-so-many folks I know at the office. It was also a bit funny because they were all different and yet had the same running theme of bold, bright colors in spite of it being Autumn season.   I remember Nurse Evan was like, this bright pink\orange must be your favorite colors because all of them are so bright.. and I'm like, well, the girl with the streak of hot pink in her hair - I guess they know me at the office. It was so many flowers that one of my nurses was like, oh is that your sister, she is going to have to take all of these home...  so the nex...

The night of my emergency neurosurgery - which involved placement of endovascular coils in a ruptured aneurysm that had been bleeding for at least a week - was tough.  Somewhere after midnight they had to take me down to CT to check the coils and the transport thru the hallways and the bright lights and the jostling ended up a bit more than my tummy could take.  I ended up puking up orange juice.. like seriously, how could there still be any orange juice left from somwhere near 18 hours ago.. that was gross, but the nurses were awesome about getting me cleaned up and changed and settled back into bed.. given I was still wobbly from post-anesthesia surgery time.  Pretty much, the drill for the 8 night, 9 day stay in the ICU was one expensive horsepill managing my BP was given every 4 hours; pain meds every 6; lipitor once daily, and the first day it seemed like every time I turned around the little blood pressure girl was sticking me to check my sugar.  The fir...

The words I was hoping to hear - You have a bad case of the flu, we're going to push some IV rehydration and keep you here for observation and run some tests.  The words that I actual heard: Your brain is bleeding, we've called Careflite?  WTF??? It couldn't just be the flu?  I remember telling BFF that it was ok to pull the plug if something happened and I wasn't ever going to be me.  I remember us both being in tears.  I remember being terrified and only be regretful that I hadn't made it to see either Sydney Harbour or the Northern Lights in person but that overall I'd had a good and wonderful life.  I remember Mama Cheryl being on the phone and telling me that the doctors at Presby Dallas were great and all was going to be OK and that I just had to calm down and know that I was in good hands... there was something so comforting in having that -- even if part of me was thinking, she is lying thru her teeth.. but mostly since she do...

Oh my, i have neglected the blog... well that's what happens when you get busy with other things.  In October, I was feeling a bit under the weather and flu-ish and the bug had been going around the office...  so as I was wrapping up a workout at the gym on October 14th and was a bit nauseated, I figured I either had caught the bug or had a bad meal out somewhere and had food poisoning.  I spent that evening pretty much heaving my toenails out and feeling generally blah. By Monday the 16th, I wasn't feeling horrible but wasn't feeling great; and was still doing my best to keep down saltines and 7-up, so I ended up working from home as well as Tuesday and Wednesday.  By Thursday October 19, I was still feeling totally blah and had an unending headache - not like the worst headache ever - but just one that wouldn't quit... so I ended up going to an Urgent Care facility that afternoon as I didn't feel up to driving across town to my primary care.  There they ga...