Surgery and hospital stay

Cody and I had to be at the hospital at 5:15 to check in on Thursday morning. We arrived right on time and there was no waiting around. I was taken right back, given a room to change and into my bed. They have these devices called BAIR PAWS to keep you warm. I control the temperature and it fills me up with warm air. Just what I like. Here I am all warm and happy presurgery. We met with my anesthesiologist and he agreed to take pictures during surgery as long as I was ok with it and Dr. Gardner. We were all on board. 

Skull

Dura matter is visible

Dark area is where he removed the tumor. Light area is cerebellum.

Tumor pieces

Site sutured up with membrane.

There you have it. Dr. Zimmerman took photos and texted them to Cody. My Dad still doesn't like to look at my pictures from my first surgery and won't look at these either. These aren't as neat as my first one, but this tumor thankfully wasn't as big. 

All out of surgery and awake. The yellow on my pillow is not leakage, it's the iodine stuff that was used on my head that has rubbed off on my pillow. 

 After coming out of surgery I remember seeing my parents in the waiting room and Cody and his parents coming out of the consult room. I was taking to the ICU. My family went to get lunch and while I was left alone for a moment RanDee happened to walk by my room and I called her in. We chatted for a minute before Cody came back. Then Kristin and Chris stopped by.

 When Cody went home Thursday night Katie drove down and visited with me for a bit. There aren't any visiting hour restrictions, so it was nice to have another friendly face for a bit. My nurses were all male in the ICU during the day. My Dad was there when the Physical Therapist came to help me get up and walk around for the first time. This was the true test to see if I had any brain damage. Thankfully I didn't. My first walk around the block was a little rough, and I decided we were making another lap and did much better. When Katie came she walked 10 laps with me.

On Friday Katie came down in the morning and visited with me again and then swapped with Cody. She had a flight home that evening. My Mom came back to see me and I had a lot of other visitors like my Grandparents Grant, Cody's hygienist Becky and her husband Jason, Joe Fullmer, Jaron and Angie Dansie, Paul Barker and one of our old ward friends, Mimi McDonald, husbands is a nurse and she came to visit with her mom and he came to my floor on a break. I was actually transferred out of the ICU the day after my surgery surprisingly. Much different than my first surgery where I remember being there many days. 

Our good friends Lindsey and Paul Greenwood came to visit Friday night.

 Karen came to see me Saturday morning and brought me some treats. 

 Cody's parents took the kids Friday night for the weekend and they brought them to visit for the first time. It was great to see them. I missed my little people. Apparently they didn't have enough clean clothes so they bought them some cute jerseys from the DI and took them to Article Circle and they got fun Easter bunnies in their kids meals. They had seen them in commercials on TV for quite some time so they were happy kids.

 Love my family. 

 I was discharged to go home on Sunday after only 4 days in the hospital. Dr. Gardner took my outer bandage off and I had Cody take a picture of my bandage. I thought we'd be able to see more, but I didn't realize there was another bandage. I took my first half shower, neck down and when Cody and I got home, he helped me wash my hair without getting my bandage wet. A few days later I took a shower and didn't care about the bandage. 

 A week after surgery I took the entire bandage off and this is what my incision looked like. 

 Katie, her husband Rob and daughter Madison came into town again for General Conference and we all went out to dinner at Tarahumarah. I love that I got to see her again.

 Yesterday, two weeks and 3 days post surgery this is what my incision looks like. My hair is coming in and my head is healing nicely. My stitches were removed last Wednesday.

Unfortunately I am still waiting on my pathology results. For some reason this is a common theme with me. First surgery it took 5 weeks to find out and now I'm going on 3 weeks. I found out today that it will most likely be 4 weeks. The pathologist at UVRMC said he was going to send it to HCI and before he did got my old tumor to compare it to. That delayed it being sent off by a week, which means I have to wait an additional week for results.