{"id":5403,"date":"2017-04-29T11:26:02","date_gmt":"2017-04-29T16:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/?p=5403"},"modified":"2017-04-29T11:26:02","modified_gmt":"2017-04-29T16:26:02","slug":"lest-we-forget-icu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/heavy-stuff\/lest-we-forget-icu\/","title":{"rendered":"Lest We Forget, ICU."},"content":{"rendered":"

This post covers the surgery to debulk the tumor infringing on my Pituitary gland and the first week thereafter, which I spent in the Intensive Care Unit at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t read the first installment of this post I recommend you do so before proceeding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tuesday, February the 7th<\/sup>, the day of my surgery arrived.\u00a0 My wife, Suzanne, and I woke up early and set off for the hospital.\u00a0 During the drive she asked if I was worried about any aspect of the surgery.\u00a0 After a moment\u2019s stoic, manly silence I gathered my courage and admitted that the prospect of memory loss concerned me.\u00a0 {Why are we men so stupid and stubborn we think it is better to hide our fears from our loved ones?}\u00a0 She reassured me it was unlikely and carried on driving.<\/p>\n

I sat silently and tried to relax while my mind played havoc with my emotions.\u00a0 Yes, I am one of the stupid, stubborn men I just mentioned.\u00a0 The reality is that a fear of memory loss more than concerned me, it terrified me.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because over thirty years previously I suffered a Cavernous Sinus Thrombosis that saw me hospitalized for three months.\u00a0 I recovered remarkably well and returned to normal… except for one thing.\u00a0 It took me a long time to realize, but virtually all my childhood memories were simply no longer there.\u00a0 It was like I jumped straight from age five to age sixteen.\u00a0 Occasionally a memory would surface, but most of my childhood memories were lost.\u00a0 Extrapolating that time to the present left me fearful of what I might lose this time around.\u00a0 What if I didn\u2019t recognize my children, or my wife, or my friends, or what I\u2019d done and who I was? \u00a0Instead of conveying these fears to Suzanne I kept silent and pretended I was fine.\u00a0 Yes, I am a stupid, stubborn man.<\/p>\n

We arrived at the hospital around 5:30am.\u00a0 Suzanne dropped me at the main entrance, allegedly to save me the walk from the parking garage but I\u2019m sure it was so she could have a cigarette to help calm her own nerves.\u00a0 Major surgery tends to make people nervous, with good reason.\u00a0 I walked in, identified myself at the desk I\u2019d been told to, and was escorted upstairs into the secured surgical area, where I was instructed to change into that unflattering hospital garb we know and love.\u00a0 After doing so I sent a text message to Suzanne explaining where I was and how to get to me.<\/p>\n

And that is where everything went blank.\u00a0 Lest we forget\u2026<\/em> more days of my life, forgotten.<\/p>\n

Please note that most of the remainder of this post are not my recollections, they are pieced together from what my wife and children have told me about those days, how they felt, and what they did during them.\u00a0 In the eloquent words of my favorite youngest daughter, Julia, \u201cI was so worried I bombed out in a psych exam.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Bear with me as I relate a particularly difficult week of my life, mostly from how my family told me it went.<\/p>\n

Dannielle, my favorite middle daughter, joined my wife to sit and wait for surgery to complete.\u00a0 They comforted each other as the estimated two-hour surgery dragged on to three hours.\u00a0 They watched as names on the In-Surgery roster went up, then came down as their surgeries were completed.\u00a0 My name didn\u2019t move.\u00a0 Four hours passed with no word, then five.\u00a0 I imagine my wife comforted Dannielle, who is quite sensitive, however this is just what I imagine… the truth is likely to be that they comforted each other equally.<\/p>\n

Over five hours after I went into surgery, it was finally over.\u00a0 Dr. Brett came out and explained complications had unavoidably extended the procedure.\u00a0 The tumor was pressing on the frontal lobes of my brain, my hypothalamus, my pituitary gland, and my optic nerves.\u00a0 Apart from the direct impact of the tumor itself, the surgeons had been unable to place a lumbar drain – this resulted in spinal fluid escaping through the wound into my nasal cavity by which the endoscope had been inserted and operated.\u00a0 Post-surgery they sent me to the Intensive Care Unit, where staff would keep a close watch on my condition.\u00a0 Hope was expressed that the wound would heal and seal itself.\u00a0 At time hope pays dividends, at others it does not.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wednesday, the day after surgery I was exhibiting signs of Diabetes Insipidus<\/a> and dumped alarming amounts of fluid via a catheter.\u00a0 {I suspect urinary catheters are normal practice after this type of surgery as they allow the patient to rest and hospital staff to measure and watch for DI.}\u00a0 Suzanne and Dannielle came to visit me and stayed most of the day.\u00a0 They were given a huge, clear plastic one liter capacity hospital mug, which I still have, and were told to encourage me to drink, which I refused to do.\u00a0 In the words of my wife “The day was an emotional roller-coaster as we saw bits of you, then saw you crash.”\u00a0 I was acting like a child, clamping my mouth shut and refusing food and drink.<\/p>\n

To get me to drink at least some fluids Dannielle took to sucking up a straw full of water, which she\u2019d leak into the corner of my mouth and I\u2019d then swallow. \u00a0My wife told me this after I left hospital, Dannielle confirmed it when I asked her.\u00a0 Dannielle said she\u2019d managed to get me to drink about half the mug of water.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day Suzanne and Dannielle left to attend to the duties of life that wait for nobody, the ill included.\u00a0 The nursing staff thought my copious urine production was a result of my drinking too much.\u00a0 Dannielle had managed to feed me about 500ml of water, but they thought I\u2019d drunk several liters so they cut off my Intravenous fluids.\u00a0 The lack of hydration caused my sodium levels to drop and brought on Sinus Tachycardia.\u00a0 As if this wasn\u2019t enough for the ICU staff to worry about, the spinal fluid that had continued to leak into my sinus cavities started pouring from my nose.<\/p>\n

Thursday, Suzanne and Dannielle arrived early to visit again.\u00a0 Suzanne, who had been my nurse when I was in hospital for the Cavernous Sinus Thrombosis {every cloud does have a silver lining}, discussed overnight events with the staff.\u00a0 They immediately placed back me on IV Fluids once they realized I wasn\u2019t actually drinking.<\/p>\n

To address to the continued leaking of spinal fluid they sent me to Interventional Radiology to have a spinal drain installed.\u00a0 Thursday passed with me out cold.<\/p>\n

Friday arrived, so did Suzanne and Dannielle.\u00a0 They sat bedside as a reasonably normal day unfolded.\u00a0 From their perspective I seemed to be myself again.\u00a0 Throughout the day a constant stream of nurses and doctors visited to discuss and examine my spinal drain, which is apparently seldom used or seen nowadays. {Please note this as it will be revisited in the next post.}<\/p>\n

Saturday came.\u00a0 Per Suzanne, things were going reasonably well, however she had a premonition something was not right but shrugged it off and left for the night.\u00a0\u00a0 Strange how often those feelings we\u2019re so eager to shrug off prove accurate\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Saturday night I completely lost my memory, didn\u2019t know who or where I was, became hostile, and proceeded to rip out my IV, my catheter, and my spinal drain.\u00a0 A psychology consult was requested, the doctor on duty diagnosed me with ICU Psychosis and administered Haldol.\u00a0 Hospital security staff forcibly subdued me, after which I was sent down to Radiology to have a CAT scan for a suspected brain bleed.\u00a0 Multiple CAT scans were performed, apparently the Radiologist thought he had found a bleed.\u00a0 My Neurosurgeon did not agree.<\/p>\n

On Sunday I was still subdued and suffering from total memory loss.\u00a0 Blood tests showed my Cortisol levels were dangerously low, so I was given a massive dose of Cortisol.<\/p>\n

\"\"
An Instagram post by my daughter, Dannielle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Monday I was returning to myself and starting to recognize my wife and daughter.\u00a0 Or so I\u2019ve been told, in my own memory that particular Monday simply doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

Tuesday, from the perspective of Suzanne and Dannielle, was a reasonably normal day in the ICU.<\/p>\n

By the end of Wednesday I was actually aware once more and had been approved for transfer to a step-down ward, where I\u2019d spend another week struggling to recover.<\/p>\n

Memory Loss\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

For those of you who\u2019ve seen memory loss depicted on television serials, it isn\u2019t like that at all.\u00a0 You see, memory loss isn\u2019t as precise as a surgeon\u2019s scalpel – it doesn’t neatly excise specific bits.\u00a0 Memory loss is administered with a heavy, blunt instrument that does collateral damage to adjoining events and time to the where and when it strikes.\u00a0 Memory loss doesn\u2019t just conk you on the head, then let you sit up in bed, bemused, but regal as ever while you talk politely to your admirers, and magically regain the memory you\u2019ve lost through a series of black and white flashbacks.<\/p>\n

Memory loss doesn\u2019t work like that at all, at least it did not for me.<\/p>\n

From the account above you\u2019ll note that Saturday night, four days after my surgery, was the night I suffered from a total memory loss.\u00a0 It socked me a real sucker-punch that stole everything from before I went into surgery until about a week afterward.\u00a0 Those days aren\u2019t gradually returning.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 It is now three months later and they remain a blank, no matter how long and hard I struggle to recall them.\u00a0 Apart from a couple of strange dream-like fragments totaling a few minutes of real time, those days are gone.\u00a0 I don’t know why those fragments were spared, but I’m glad they were, you see they restore some faith in my own sanity.<\/p>\n

Memory-wise, it is as if those missing days didn\u2019t even happen.\u00a0 Only they did.<\/p>\n

And the worst was yet to come\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

{P.S. I am particularly grateful to my wife Suzanne, and my daughters Tamryn and Dannielle for putting their normal lives on the back-burner to tend me, even though I didn\u2019t know who they were or why they were there.\u00a0 To my son Gareth, and my youngest daughter Julia, whom I believe my wife protected by keeping from my bedside \u2013 I lost you for days, but I am so glad to have you back.}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post covers the surgery to debulk the tumor infringing on my Pituitary gland and the first week thereafter, which I spent in the Intensive Care Unit at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t read the first installment of this post I recommend you do so before proceeding. Tuesday, February the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[58,214,435],"class_list":["post-5403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-heavy-stuff","tag-brain-surgery","tag-intensive-care","tag-tumor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}