Well this day certainly didn’t go the way I thought it would. We went out with friends last night and stayed up way too late, so I was still pretty tired when I got to mom’s. Connie texted and asked me to call before I headed over. She told me mom didn’t sleep well again and that she was very weak and tired, and that her incision seemed to be bleeding. When I got there, Bob was with her and warned me that he was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to move her without help. She seemed groggy and extremely weak and even a little confused. I did not like the way this was going. I could barely get her to the bathroom and back to her bedroom alone. I texted Iris and asked her opinion. I looked at her incision and thought, oh my god, what the hell? It looked like it was very puffy and like it was starting to open. I have a low gag threshold and this was taking me to the edge. I texted Patricia-who has saved my butt multiple times these last few weeks. She came over and didn’t like what she saw either and thought it was time to call the neurosurgeon. Dr Norton was on call, which made me very happy because he did Rick’s brain surgery 25 years ago. Yeah, he’s old, but he’s still got it. He told me to take her to the TMC ER. They got her right in and when they moved her in to the bed, blood just splashed out of the opening. Gag. They did some blood work, ran a culture of the opening and did yet another CT scan. How is it that mom doesn’t glow in the dark with all these x-rays? Dr Norton asked the ER doc to see if she could look in to the incision to see if she could see the craniotomy. She could. He came right over. He said he would have to take her to surgery and clean out the wound, getting rid of the necrotic tissue and removing the catheter that Schroeder left in for drainage. He said her body didn’t like having that plastic in there and it needed to go. Then he would re-suture it. Within a few hours, she was re-admitted and headed to surgery with general anesthesia again.

The surgery went fairly fast and he felt good about it. He was glad he didn’t have to remove the bone flap again, but said this would be kind of hard on her-that she had been through a lot these past weeks. She would go to recovery and then back to the Intensive Observation Unit (Room 858) and would probably have to stay in until Monday or Tuesday, depending on how things went in the next few days. We ran out for a quick bite, because we were all starving, and then went back to the hospital with the chemo drugs. She really didn’t look very good, and she asked if we were there to take her home. Umm, no. She didn’t like hearing she would be in for a few more days. I want her to stay until she is steady enough to get to the bathroom without too much trouble. I know how she was this morning and it’s way more than I can handle. We’re not doing that BS again.

So here we are yet again. I don’t know why this all happened but I do wonder if it’s because she kept touching it. I kept telling her not to, but she couldn’t keep her hands away. Or was it something else? I just don’t know.

Before I sign off, because I am wiped out, I would like to say a big Thank you to Rosa and Mert! They brought mom dinner last night and offered to do it again on Monday. Mary also offered to come on Sunday and Bob on Monday. You guys are great! This is exactly what we need-and when she is back I will definitely take you up on your offers to help! I appreciate it so much! And need it!