~Mom's Brain Surgery~

What a way for my dad to spend his birthday, lol.  He spent it at the hospital with my mom , who went in first thing in the morning to have brain surgery.

About a year ago, she had her hip replaced.  A few days after being home, she started acting strangely.  She wasn't making any sense and didn't know what year it was, so my dad took her to the ER.  He thought she had had a stroke.  They did all sorts of tests on her and did a CT scan on her brain.  They ruled out a stroke, but found that all her organs were shutting down.  She was in A fib, her liver was shutting down, her kidneys were shutting down, she was literally a mess.  They determined she was having a drug overdose to her pain pills.  She hadn't been drinking enough water so the pain pills were building up in her system, and she essentially had a drug over dose.  The blessing in all of this was that they found a tumor on her brain.  It was the size of a walnut.  They suggested she get it out, but that she recover first from everything she was going through.  They said they would just watch it.  At her follow up 6 month appointment, they did another CT scan on her brain.  They found that the tumor had grown to the size of a golf ball.  Again they suggested she get it out, but I think she was still shaken up with what happened with her last surgery and was hesitant.  She told the doctor she was going to Hawaii in February and she'd just wait to get it out until after her trip.  The doctor warned her though that she would probably be getting constant headaches and might get very irritable with the pressure the tumor was putting on her brain.  She thought it over for about a week and decided she'd better get it removed.  Which was a good thing because when they opened her skull up, they found that the tumor had grown to the size of a baseball.  It was located right between her eyes on the front of the brain.  Before going in for surgery she commented that she was having severe constant headaches and that her eyes felt like they were going to pop out of her head.  No wonder she was feeling that way with the tumor growing that large.  It's good she got it out when she did.

 

The surgery lasted about 4-5 hours, but went very well.  They got the tumor and said everything couldn't have gone better.

Mom was in the hospital for a week.  She has lost her sense of smell, but they expected that to happen.

She had staples from ear to ear.  She asked me to tell her how many.  I counted one side to the top of her head which was 25, so my guess is that she had about 50.  It's crazy what they can do nowadays.  We are so thankful for modern medicine, where they can catch these things before they become to much of a problem.