The past few days haven't been nearly as bad. I don't know if the steroid is starting to offer some relief, but Jared has been feeling quite a bit better. The headaches are pretty much gone, he went to work Thursday for most of the day, Friday he worked from home a little, and today he got up early and headed to work (he came home early, but I wasn't surprised because he isn't sleeping hardly at all! The steroids are keeping him up all night!). He's also been going for walks and takes the kids to the park. He says he still feels dumb, though. He can't get his thoughts straight. But definitely a night and day difference from last week, or even a few days ago!
I spoke to the neurosurgeon that will be performing the surgery last Wednesday. He answered most of my questions, but there's still some things that we're not very clear on. He did go over some of the risks of surgery - possibility of weakening his right side more, but he expected for the surgery to go well and told us to anticipate 2-3 days in the hospital (if everything goes well). If he needs rehab again, obviously that will be longer. I would say that's our biggest worry about surgery - weakening his right side. He's already having a hard time.
They are doing another MRI today so that the neurosurgeon can map out his brain prior to surgery. The surgery is scheduled for 7:00 tomorrow morning. As I think back to his first surgery, the MRI was done about 20 minutes before, leaving NO time for thorough mapping!! So that's comforting - I think this neurosurgeon will be more prepared.
I keep getting asked the same question - if they are worried about the swelling, isn't another surgery just going to add to the swelling? Well, that's what I would think. I'm not really sure, other than my understanding is that they really need to get the swelling under control through medications, and they need to know what they're dealing with to know which medications.
So that's where we're at. In my ideal world, they will see miraculous results in today's MRI and cancel the surgery all-together. I don't know if that's even in the realm of possibilities, but if they go forward with surgery, I will just accept that this is for the best. We've had too many prayers in our behalf to second-guess everything.
