Good afternoon all.
Little has changed regarding Becca's status from yesterday to today.
When we came in yesterday evening she was quite restless and had been since late afternoon. They had tried slowing down on the morphine around lunchtime but all this did was make her mad...lol
Trouble is is that when she gets annoyed she is holding her breath and her sats go way down. She usually runs around 72% to 74% when healthy, since the surgery she has been running in the 80's because she is on full time oxygen. When she gets annoyed it goes way down and takes ages to get back up again. There have been several times today that we have seen her sats go as low as 42% and that is not good.
Anyways...still the ongoing battle between medicating to make her comfortable but not masking neuro signs that they need to watch.....so the Pain team came around today.
They have prescribed one of those button things for the nurse to operate....she is allowed it every 15 minutes, she is also to get meds every 4 hours into her NJ tube, I think it is called oxymorphan?? Both meds are still opiates so they are also giving her Narcal??? - a drug to stop the opiate effects of the other meds. So she should be pain free but not asleep/knocked out all of the time.
The physical therapist has also started to come around to work with her on her arms and legs.
I dont know whether I said before but she has been showing that she has a marked weakness on her right hand side. She will wiggle her toes if asked but only on the left, she will grip with her hand but only on her left.
They think her speech loss is caused by where the needle went into her brain to do the aspiration, they feel that it may have bled down the track of the needle and when that blood clears up her speech may come back.
The neurologist came in today to see if her disturbances were neuron based versus tissue pain based, he feels that he thinks it is just straight pain or agitation and that for now he is not going to do anything with her, which he says is good as he says the less we have to do with him the better and he hopes not to see us again
We asked the neuro surgeon how long the brain drain was likely to be in and he said probably 7-10 days. At the moment it looks like strawberry punch, it has to go through a thick dark 'motor oil' stage and then a tea looking stage before finishing. If it finishes before then that is not good as it means the clot has not been dissolved and it is still in there which means it would have to be removed via surgery. A CT scan yesterday showed no lessening of the mask nor any growth of the mass, that is all holding steady.
The neuro surgeon also mentioned that after all of this is over there is a less than 50% chance that Becca's brain will have the ability to naturally drain its own ventricals and that she may finish up having to have an internal brain drain fitted.
David didnt go to work today with Becca being so unstable last night but he is thinking of going in tomorrow. It depends on what time we get to sleep tonight, with it being a 90 minute commute David has to make sure he has the energy to do the commute both ways, do a days work and still have energy left over to go and see Becca in the evening.
I think thats it for now........I shall update again as things happen. It is kinda hit and miss the times I can update.
Love
Mandy
