Post Op day 1 (Friday)

10:00 am: I went in ICU and talked to Matt. The surgeon and the physical therapist had been in this AM. He needs to walk and sit up to make sure everything moves properly. He says he gets a little more of a headache when he does that, but knows this is normal.
Had labs drawn while I was in there; blood sugar is 129 and they will check his protein levels every few hours or so. Apparently he has had to pee every hour for the past few weeks, and this is because the tumor was pressing on (?) which controls the sodium/kidneys and the body has been confused on where the sodium is in the body (inside vs outside an area? I don't know...ask me about the eyes...I don't do kidneys  haha). This will hopefully level out soon, now that the tumor is out. He still has the catheter in, isn't real excited to have it taken out because of the removal (ouch) and he knows he will have to get up to pee, and he gets worse headaches with standing. The nurse says this is ok for a while, but should look forward to having it out today. They will wait until after the postop MRI (should be anytime). Jinnefer (Starr's cousin) and I were reminiscing about previous cath removals after childbirth years ago, and that didn't alleviate any of his concerns about pain hahaha sorry Matt. Love you.

Some random shots of the day. Good day. He walked, and was sitting up for awhile to eat lunch. 



I had a great convo with him today; asked him lots of questions about yesterday, the pre op, waking up, this AM, etc. He remembers everything he needs to, which is fantastic. He remembers when the anesthesiologist drove his bed away (from us in preop, to surgery yesterday) that he kept running into walls. The anesth said "jeez we need a new bed for you! haha". Then he went into the OR, lined up next to the surgical bed and climbed over (scooted over) to it with a little help. Then he doesn't remember anything else. That's good; he was worried about that yesterday. The nurse yesterday said it took him a little longer to go under because he's a big guy. Came out of it ok. He remembers waking up. Doesn't really have a sore throat from the intubation, but says he felt like he had to cough up or clear up his throat a lot. He was doing that last night. It scared Starr and I because he would be lying there under the oxygen mask, drifting off (breathing labored because of pain) and all of a sudden we thought he was choking. Yikes we were on high alert! I can't remember if I posted this part, but they did a shift change last night when I was with him and because they were updating the new shift with patient info and they wouldn't let me leave til that was all done, so Starr and were with him for over an hour. When I was able to switch out (he can only have 2 people in there at a time, so we are switching out every once in a while), mom called me a hog  hahaha
Back to today...he is on steroids to reduce any inflammation (there's bound to be some of that; they dug around in his brain for crying out loud!), got a dose of IV antibiotics when I was in there, and he is on Lortab every 6 hours for the pain. They don't want him on IV or injection pain meds because they want him to be able to understand and tolerate the pain, because when he goes home he can't take Fentanyl with him :)
We talked about his flying status; this will temporarily hold his status until further notice.
He is on anti-seizure meds as a precaution; seizures are a concern after brain surgery, so this is normal. The nurse says he may be on these for a few days or even a couple weeks.