It's now a little shy of a month since the surgery and I'm heading back to work in about 45 minutes. I've been keeping an eye out for any signs of strange behaviour and I have to say I think I'm more or less fine.
I no longer get tired from concentrating, at least no more tired than normal and I am able to maintain an activity for a sustained period without issue.
I have noticed the occasional word finding difficulty but I'm not sure that this is the result of the surgery or merely paranoia. I think it's more likely paranoia than anything, I definitely had some difficulty with this previously.
I'm fairly interested to see how I handle 8 hours of actual concentration and work. Only time will tell. I'm fairly confident of my ability to survive it however!
Monday, November 29, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Past and present
I've given up trying to keep the titles of these blogs consistent and ordered. I've lost track of the days.
I had the surgery on the 29th so a little less than 3 weeks ago. I'm almost back to myself again. I'm thinking and behaving normally and my scalp is almost completely healed. Unfortunately major surgery and a couple of weeks of doing nothing has left me very weak. I get tired really quickly so it's going to take a fair amount of work before I can go back to regular life.
I'm trying to keep my days busy, lots of people to catch up with and things to do around the house but I still get so exhausted mentally just doing that. I have trouble concentrating on things for more than 20-30 minutes at a time, even varied things like video games which I used to be able to do for hours. Reading articles is hard work, I tend to get distracted and wander off in the middle of them. I imagine this is just something I have to work at and build up again.
If anyone has any questions please feel free to post them in the comments and I will endeavour to answer them!
Going back to what actually happened in hospital;
Once I was out of the HDU I went back into the regular ward where I had my own room. It was a pretty sweet change, much nicer to be alone and not constantly harassed by the other patients.
One of the things you don't anticipate is that they wake you up every hour in the HDU to check that you haven't had a sudden stroke or some other complication so you get very little rest and feel exhausted the entire time. Suddenly only being checked on every 4-6 hours makes a world of difference in terms of how you feel.
Plus being able to get up and walk around makes things a lot better. After lying down for 4 days straight you get insanely sore hips and knees. It takes a lot of effort to get up and get walking again.
Annnnd I've run out of attention.
I had the surgery on the 29th so a little less than 3 weeks ago. I'm almost back to myself again. I'm thinking and behaving normally and my scalp is almost completely healed. Unfortunately major surgery and a couple of weeks of doing nothing has left me very weak. I get tired really quickly so it's going to take a fair amount of work before I can go back to regular life.
I'm trying to keep my days busy, lots of people to catch up with and things to do around the house but I still get so exhausted mentally just doing that. I have trouble concentrating on things for more than 20-30 minutes at a time, even varied things like video games which I used to be able to do for hours. Reading articles is hard work, I tend to get distracted and wander off in the middle of them. I imagine this is just something I have to work at and build up again.
If anyone has any questions please feel free to post them in the comments and I will endeavour to answer them!
Going back to what actually happened in hospital;
Once I was out of the HDU I went back into the regular ward where I had my own room. It was a pretty sweet change, much nicer to be alone and not constantly harassed by the other patients.
One of the things you don't anticipate is that they wake you up every hour in the HDU to check that you haven't had a sudden stroke or some other complication so you get very little rest and feel exhausted the entire time. Suddenly only being checked on every 4-6 hours makes a world of difference in terms of how you feel.
Plus being able to get up and walk around makes things a lot better. After lying down for 4 days straight you get insanely sore hips and knees. It takes a lot of effort to get up and get walking again.
Annnnd I've run out of attention.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Backtracking 3 - Problem child
I've been posting updates from my phone as for whatever reason I couldn't sustain the concentration necessary to use a PC but the phone was fine (what?). So I'm back on the PC now and finding things much easier.
Anyway, following the last post I was talking about the other inmates in the HDU.
The last was a late middle aged woman who seemed initially more or less sane. However, the truth was quickly revealed as she turned out to be just as, if not more looney than the others. She would press the nurse call button repeatedly just to get a small power kick out of the nurses coming running. She'd always claim it was an accident... but it was obvious given how regularly she did it that it wasn't. Plus she'd regularly get into arguments with the nurses and accuse them of stealing from her or something equally stupid. I'm not really clear on what she was actually doing, I was pretty woozy at this point.
In the HDU they wake you up every hour of every day to make sure you haven't lapsed into a coma or something equally terrible. Each wake up they ask you if you know where you are and what the date is. The desire to troll the nurses is pretty strong but it's definitely not in your best interest given that at this point you're so weak you need assistance going to the bathroom and eating.
Thankfully I got past all that fairly quickly. I made it out of the HDU in about 3 days and was turning down painkillers and anti-nausea meds by about day 5 if I recall rightly. Not because I'm tough mind you but because all that stuff made me feel so much worse. Tramadol and Morphine make me want to throw up more than they kill the pain so they weren't the right painkillers for me. Thankfully paracetemol worked pretty well on me so I wasn't without pain relief.
After the HDU I was moved to my own room in the regular ward which was a totally different world to the challenges of the HDU.
Anyway, following the last post I was talking about the other inmates in the HDU.
The last was a late middle aged woman who seemed initially more or less sane. However, the truth was quickly revealed as she turned out to be just as, if not more looney than the others. She would press the nurse call button repeatedly just to get a small power kick out of the nurses coming running. She'd always claim it was an accident... but it was obvious given how regularly she did it that it wasn't. Plus she'd regularly get into arguments with the nurses and accuse them of stealing from her or something equally stupid. I'm not really clear on what she was actually doing, I was pretty woozy at this point.
In the HDU they wake you up every hour of every day to make sure you haven't lapsed into a coma or something equally terrible. Each wake up they ask you if you know where you are and what the date is. The desire to troll the nurses is pretty strong but it's definitely not in your best interest given that at this point you're so weak you need assistance going to the bathroom and eating.
Thankfully I got past all that fairly quickly. I made it out of the HDU in about 3 days and was turning down painkillers and anti-nausea meds by about day 5 if I recall rightly. Not because I'm tough mind you but because all that stuff made me feel so much worse. Tramadol and Morphine make me want to throw up more than they kill the pain so they weren't the right painkillers for me. Thankfully paracetemol worked pretty well on me so I wasn't without pain relief.
After the HDU I was moved to my own room in the regular ward which was a totally different world to the challenges of the HDU.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Backtracking 2 - HDU
Out of surgery I ended up in HDU, the high dependency unit. This is where they put you to make sure you survived surgery ok and don't have brain damage. So I ended up there with about 3 other people all in varying states of recovery.
Immediately after coming to I had a throbbing head ache, as you might expect. Plus lots of nausea resulting in me throwing up on myself a few times... Not my finest hour.
My family came to visit straight away and I was coherent enough to recognise and mess with them. Pranks after brain surgery are pretty low and I didn't have enough strength to really commit to it.
The other people in the HDU were much worse than me, thank god I had the surgery when I was young and tough. One guy thought it was 1989 and that he was in Christchurch. He kept trying to pull the drain out of his head, much to the annoyance of the nurses.
Another dude knew where and when he was but had obviously had a stroke or something and couldn't tell if his left hand was his or someone elses. Plus he couldn't work out how to use the nurse call button and would just shout until someone came and told him it was his own hand he was hitting.
Hospital is the worst place to recover.
Immediately after coming to I had a throbbing head ache, as you might expect. Plus lots of nausea resulting in me throwing up on myself a few times... Not my finest hour.
My family came to visit straight away and I was coherent enough to recognise and mess with them. Pranks after brain surgery are pretty low and I didn't have enough strength to really commit to it.
The other people in the HDU were much worse than me, thank god I had the surgery when I was young and tough. One guy thought it was 1989 and that he was in Christchurch. He kept trying to pull the drain out of his head, much to the annoyance of the nurses.
Another dude knew where and when he was but had obviously had a stroke or something and couldn't tell if his left hand was his or someone elses. Plus he couldn't work out how to use the nurse call button and would just shout until someone came and told him it was his own hand he was hitting.
Hospital is the worst place to recover.
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Friday, November 5, 2010
Backtracking
Its been a bit over a week since my surgery and I'm almost feeling normal again.
Surgery day itself was fairly intense. The nurses woke me up about 5am to have a shower and get prepared. Then back to bed til around 8am at which point my bed was wheeled down to the pre-op room. From there I was reintroduced to the anaesthetists and taken into the theatre where I was transferred to the operating table. The anaesthetist gave me a shot of some kind of benzodiazapam which made everything significantly less nervewracking.
I don't remember being given the injection of anaesthetic but when I came to 4 or 5 hours later I was in the recovery room. For a wee while I was very confused and kept trying to sit up despite the various leads and lures attached to my head and arms.
Then they moved me to the high dependency unit for monitoring for a few days.
Thats a story for another day...
Surgery day itself was fairly intense. The nurses woke me up about 5am to have a shower and get prepared. Then back to bed til around 8am at which point my bed was wheeled down to the pre-op room. From there I was reintroduced to the anaesthetists and taken into the theatre where I was transferred to the operating table. The anaesthetist gave me a shot of some kind of benzodiazapam which made everything significantly less nervewracking.
I don't remember being given the injection of anaesthetic but when I came to 4 or 5 hours later I was in the recovery room. For a wee while I was very confused and kept trying to sit up despite the various leads and lures attached to my head and arms.
Then they moved me to the high dependency unit for monitoring for a few days.
Thats a story for another day...
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Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Home again - day 12
I survived my surgery with out any major dramas and I'm currently staying with my parents while I recover. I'll try and post what actually went down over the coming days as my attention span comes back.
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