The ICU room is dark. It’s 6am. Lisa is doing well, and seems to be sleeping well between the pokes and prods. The nurses, doctors and staff at St. David’s are exceptional. It’s easy to see that, for each of the professionals that have helped Lisa, this is much more than just a job to them. They really care about her as a person. Lisa’s current nurse, Reagan, apologized a while ago for having waked her up every 10 minutes throughout the night. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much of an exaggeration. I figure my job now as her husband is to get her discharged before she dies of sleep deprivation. I guess it was around 1am when Reagan told us they would do her post op CAT scan at around 2 or 3. It actually happened at around 5 or so. When she got back from the CAT scan, Lisa asked for pain meds for the first time since surgery. I just assumed that they would have her on some automatically, after what she’s been through, but not so. When she asked, Reagan said she needed to talk with the doc first because Lisa’s blood pressure is on the low side. Reagan was worried about Lisa bottoming out her blood pressure with the push button control she will have over the pain med – dilaudid – that Reagan says is better than morphine. I volunteered that Lisa has a really high pain tolerance, that she gave birth to all three of our kids without drugs, and that she’s unlikely to overmedicate. That’s Lisa… I would be a different story altogether. But Reagan just came back in the room and is hooking Lisa up, literally. She’s clearly in some pain now, and it will be good to see her frown turn into a smile. Reagan is setting up the PCA – Patient Controlled Analgesia – system so that Lisa can self-administer every 10 minutes. When time is up, Lisa’s little button lights up green. Then she can push the button and get another wave of pain relief. I kept hoping to see Reagan setting up “his and hers” push buttons, but I guess it’s not going to happen. I’ll post again later today to let you know how she’s doing, and to give you a little more detail about the procedure she endured to kill the evil monkey. It’s kind of like slamming your car into a tree to send your hijacker through the windshield. The bad guy gets killed, but the good guy pays a painful price. I think our good guy’s drugs just hit with her second push of the button… she just went from softly groaning to looking very, very relaxed. Please... keep those prayers coming!
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The Evil Monkey is dead. We know for a fact. We talked with the guy that killed it. Big, laid back, soft spoken man with a steady hand… Dr. Tumu. He says that they successfully removed all of the tumor, and that it appears to be benign as expected. There was none of the feared entanglement with the bone at the floor of the skull above her sinus cavity, from where the tumor sprang. They are waiting for her to wake up now. It is currently 3:11 in the afternoon. Lisa spent last night in the 2nd floor intensive care ward, ICU2, and her expectation was that she would be on the 5th floor after surgery, in the primary ICU ward. One of the nurses told her that the 5th floor ICU rooms are brand new and that they are really nice. They said that I would be particularly comfortable. That intrigued me. The plan has changed though, because St. David’s is taking in hurricane transfers and the 5th floor ICU is full. That’s as good an excuse as I’ve heard for a change of plans. We really feel for the terrible loss suffered by victims of the hurricane, and are so proud of how Austin and the rest of Texas is responding. So sometime very soon, I hope, they will wheel her back into the same room she left this morning. Maybe looking a little beat up, but with a large section of blank canvas on which to paint her future; with the pressure relieved. Subtract one evil monkey, add beaucoup new potential. I like that math! Nothing but good news! But there is still a long road ahead of her, and she still needs your prayers. But first pat yourself on the back for a job well done! Thank you so very much. The update just came. They are wrapping up the surgery now, and Lisa has done great. Everything went just as expected, and the surgeon will be finished in about 30 minutes. He will then come to the waiting room to give us more detail. I hope he’s not intimidated by crowds… Lisa has a bunch of fans in the waiting room.
Great news, but we’re not done yet! Please keep on praying, and maybe throw in a big “Thank You” before the next “Please”. I’ll let you know as soon as I know more. Kickoff was a little late. They called me at 9:30 to say that surgery had commenced about 15 minutes prior to that, and that they would give me another update at around noon. With a 9:15 start time and using the surgeon’s best estimate, we can expect her to be out of surgery by maybe around 2:30 or 3:00. I received that call while in the exam room with Zac at his appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. The bike rides there and back, through several blocks of north campus Austin neighborhoods, literally breathed new air into my lungs and my soul. It was the thing I loved most about my first experience of Holland – biking is a primary mode of transportation that is given preference over cars. Granted, it is flat as a pancake and is not quite the size of Texas, but still… But I diverge. It would seem that the Powells have begun a long awaited run of good news. Zac’s shoulder injury, while painful and debilitating at the moment, is not serious enough to be a candidate for surgery and will heal within about 6 weeks. I hate to keep hitting you up for prayers, but if you have one or two left please pray that Zac is able to rest it enough to really heal quickly. It’s kind of killing him to be out of the kitchen – maybe even more than being off of his bike. If you’ve tasted his cooking, you know that we all want him healed up and back in the kitchen as soon as possible. But if you have a limited number of prayers in you today, Zac’s can wait a day or two. Today, as often as she crosses your mind, please Pray for Lisa. And just as I finished typing that, the update call came. Mark is the big man that wheeled Lisa out of her room this morning, and is one of the many professionals in there with her. He said she is doing great, and that the surgery is going exactly as expected. They are not done resecting the tumor yet, and they expect to finish early afternoon. He projected that our next update call will be at around 1:30 or 2:00. I’ll explain more about the procedure in a subsequent post. Your call as to whether you want to read it or not, but I kind of promised right at the beginning to take you along for the ride. But for now I want to get this out – I know you want to know how she’s doing. My phone hasn’t gotten this much action in the last three years combined. Thank you again for your love and support, and thank you for your prayers. They rolled her down the hall and through the doors about 15 minutes ago. So her surgery will begin any minute now, and Dr. Tumu has said we should expect it to take 5 to 6 hours. We told him not to rush. Lisa is convinced that surgery was delayed from 7am until now because she was sleeping so deeply, and that they wanted her to get a little extra sleep. My sweet daughter insisted that I go home and get a few hours of solid sleep last night. God bless her - it was a gift much appreciated. Lisa did wake up with a headache this morning - a hangover from yesterday's drug induced sleep. She asked for an ibuprofin but was denied. The anesthesiologist checked in and assured her that the headache would be long gone as soon as he went to work. In the meantime, she went with the old fashioned approach, donned an ice bag hat, and made yet another fashion statement. I am about to go hop on my bike, currently locked up in the bed of the truck, and peddle over to Zac's appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. Nothing like multitasking! I will update you when I know more. You know what to do. Please do it now! And thank you so much! Lisa is finishing up her dinner. She ate the ice cream first. They have periodically given her neuromotor tests, I guess you would call them. Making sure her brain is still directing her limbs and other testable functions properly in the wake of the angiogram. She has passed all tests with flying colors. She wants you to know that she ate the ice cream first because her throat was sore after the procedure this morning, and not because she is an ice cream hound. She says. She is sitting here next to me and sends the following message: "I just want to thank everybody for praying for me and thinking of me. I can feel all the love. And I want to send my love out to all of them." It feels like it's been a long day, but not when I think about what tomorrow has in store. I still think that a little oxycodon or something for family and close friends is the humane way to go. But as long as tomorrow will be for all of us that love Lisa, it will be a much longer day for the evil monkey. This is its last night. Tomorrow it will see the light of day, and then it will die. The surgeons have devised an especially heinous and fitting death for the monkey, but one that protects Lisa's precious brain. Maybe tomorrow I will give full disclosure on those little details... I don't know. I'm a visual thinker, and it's hard to unsee something. For tonight, know that Lisa is doing well and that she's now drifting off to sleep. But not before having shot a little finger to the monkey... to let it spend a long night thinking about how it will see the light tomorrow morning. At the risk of stating the obvious, I will do just that: Please pray for Lisa, both now and tomorrow. They will start prepping her at about 6am, and surgery is still scheduled for 7:00. I will forward updates as we get them tomorrow, God willing! OK… Great job to all of you who are praying. The first news is as good as it can be. She is done with the cerebral angiogram, and it went much faster than expected. He mapped out all of her veins from the neck up. He said they are beautiful. No plaque, no nothing. She has the veins of an 18 year old, he said. More importantly, he said the blood supply to the tumor itself is very, very minimal. So there was no need to do the embolization – the procedure to block off the blood supply to the tumor to start to kill it and to make the surgery easier. The veins are too tiny to embolize. Mimimal blood supply means the surgery will be easier. God is good! All the time! And thank God for Radio Paradise. I am in a small waiting room within air sucking distance of a hillbilly from some small town that is no doubt within donkey range of here. He is loudly bashing Austin. The traffic. Would never want to live here. Too many homeless. The sweet lady at the desk who was unfortunately perpetuating the droning with her good manners mentioned that they were converting a building near her home in Pflugerville to a homeless shelter. He replied with “Well there goes the neighborhood!”.
At which point I literally slammed the back of my head against the wall behind me, glared at Gomer, and pointed out that he can’t complain about both homelessness and homeless shelters in the same sentence. I’m afraid I put a damper on the conversation. But not enough that he actually shut up for more than a few precious seconds. Phone, headphones, volume up. A good friend recently introduced me to Radio Paradise, with the ripple effect that today I avoid an assault and battery charge. This is literally the first time I’ve used my phone with headphones to listen to music. I like it. God bless hillbillies. I feel bad that I did such a poor job of representing Austin love and good vibe to Gomer. I’ll claim PTSD as my excuse – the weenie form. Nobody has tried to shoot me or blow me up. But it has been an interesting summer. Lisa is reportedly back among the conscious and probably feeling a bit hung over about now. I should get to see her in about another half an hour, when they will bring her out of recovery. I’ve been told that she will be in Room 254. That is a room on the intensive care unit - where they limit the patient to 2 visitors at a time. She will likely go to a different intensive care room after surgery tomorrow. I'll let you know when I know more. In the meantime, keep it up! Let’s knock until the door comes off the hinges! He is obviously listening. I need your help. I’ve been troubled by continuing to run across people that are very close to us but who didn’t know anything about Lisa’s situation. My failure… and I’m trying to rectify it. It would be really helpful if we could figure out who is reading the blog and then be able scan that list for obvious omissions – key friends and family that maybe still don’t know. I’ll blame the collective damage to both Lisa’s and my brain. But at least hers will be repaired!
Sooo… I need to ask a big favor . Please just shoot me a quick email to: [email protected] and in the subject line put: Pray for Lisa No pressure, but do it right now. Please. Don’t feel like you need to write a note – just copy and paste and hit send. Done! Knowing that you’re reading along will mean a lot to Lisa and to me – but not nearly as much as your prayers do. We can feel the love and support coming from every direction. Thank you so much! I can't ask a favor and not at least give you a photo... At Elise's opening Jake took a spin with my camera. He has a good eye and got several nice shots... good light, well framed and well focused. At one point he was experimenting in low light with his sweet Mama as his model, and he caught an angelic and beautiful image. Don't mean to brag, but we got artists comin out our ears around here! If you didn't send that email, do it now. And then Pray for Lisa. Please. A Hurricane… Austin was pelted with heavy rain and wind, but nothing like what’s happened on the Texas coast, in Houston, and in other places that are flooded and yet to flood. Our hearts and prayers are with our fellow Texans who are left vulnerable by this storm. In the midst of the outer bands starting to hit Austin, Lisa and I made two trips to the East side of town. Elise curated and built an exhibit with the work of sixteen artists in her studio. The opening was on Friday night, and the show ran 24 hours – with performances by the artists scheduled across that time. Lisa served beers and received donations for the exhibit. One of the works of art was a collective effort that several people participated in building as the wind and rain swirled outside. Interestingly, it kind of took on the form of a hurricane… An Old Fashioned… Bonnie met Charlie on Thursday, and we learned that Bonnie is an old fashioned girl. Not on the first date! So we headed home from South Austin with Charlie hot and Bonnie just bothered. We let them think about it on Friday, and then on Saturday and Sunday Charlie came to our house for two play dates. They seemed to develop a rapport, but there’s no reason for Charlie to lay awake wondering how many pups he’s responsible for. We may have missed the boat due to an eclipse. Delay of Game penalty: 6 months. And a Shot… as in a shot of reality! This time tomorrow Lisa will be checked into the hospital, and I will be camped out there with her. As is the Powell way, I will be by her side constantly until we get her out of there – or make sure that someone else is there with her when I’m not. If Lisa needs anything, she will get it. She will have an advocate. We check in at St. David’s at 32nd Street and Interstate 35 tomorrow at 7am. The frontal craniotomy is scheduled for 7am on Wednesday the 30th… the day after tomorrow. We expect the surgery to take about 5 hours, so if all goes well she will be in recovery by around noon Wednesday. Pray. Please. OK... That last post was a bit of a downer, and I've never posted twice on the same day before. But I won't be able to say that tomorrow. This also gets me around Jake's word limit... With the medical post of the way, we do have some other news to share. First a small confession, and then a much welcomed bright spot on the Powell horizon… God willing! The Confession: When I wrote two posts ago that “We have friends who drove” to see the eclipse, I was stretching the truth – or maybe just projecting a future truth. The eclipse seekers are the family of Charlie, and we haven’t even met them yet. We first talked just a few days ago, and the conversation was brought on by Bonnie… our Irish setter. Shall we say that for Bonnie… love is in the air? The Bright Spot: A close friend of the family knew that we were interested in finding an intact male Irish Setter… and they connected us with Charlie. We’ve had Irish Setters in the family since I got my first one in college… God bless Penny! We’ve had a run of really good dogs, with one or two basket cases thrown in. But of all the setters we’ve ever had, I think it’s safe to say that Bonnie is the sweetest soul and the best dog yet. And that’s saying something! We have wanted for a long time to extend her blood line, and at her age she’s approaching the end of her window for safely having a litter. She is effectively a forty (plus) year old virgin, and Charlie is effectively a teenager. Bonnie has a date with Charlie tomorrow morning, and she’s spent the entire day messing with her hair. Sooo… in around 58 days the Powell house should be home to some of the cutest puppies you have ever seen. If you think I’m lying, check out Bonnie’s baby picture. By the time Bonnie becomes a momma, Lisa will be healed up and back among us. A litter of Irish setter pups should breathe some new life into the place! But for now, let’s not let that distract us from Priority 1… Please pray for Lisa! Do it now! |
AuthorWritten by David, with review and approval by Lisa before posting Archives
January 2018
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