Gosh, it’s weird and confusing to be here all over again. Here I sit at Barnes Jewish waiting for surgery. I’ve been through this once so you’d think I’d know what’s happening, but i don’t. It’s been a strange whirlwind sort of weekend and we are just getting to see the full picture.

These last couple of weeks have been harder on me than the initial recovery and last week it got real bad by wednesday when I woke up with terrible pain and headaches which caused me to throw up and then I continued throwing up all morning from about 4 or 5 am until noon and then I finally found a comfortable position and fell off to sleep and slept the rest of the afternoon. The next couple of days were rough, but no more throwing up until Saturday. Saturday was nearly exactly like Wednesday. I woke up earlier than usual and then continually vomitted, but it never stopped. We called the neurosurgeon, just as we did on Wednesday and they weren’t terribly concerned (they didn’t think it was surgical or related to my surgery). But the neurosurgeons said that we should go to our local ER if the pain persisted.

Finally around 3 pm or so we realized that I was getting no relief. The problem, though, for me, was that I couldn’t imagine having to go by car to the hospital. The light and motion seemed like they would just make everything so much worse that I delayed a fair bit before agreeing to go. Well, reason kicked in and my wife helped me to the car and drove me over to St. James OSF Hospital in Pontiac. We go to the hospital around 4 or 4:30 pm.

They got me right into an ER room and I we asked them to make it dark and quiet.  They took care of it immediately and got me on some anti-nausea meds and morphine. Gretchen stopped by cause she was already out and about and sat with me while Carrie went home to pick up my MRI scans and reports from February and March (which we had left at home). The Pontiac hospital did a CT Scan and we waited until 2 am or so to find out that they believed there was bleeding in my brain from the surgery.

It was a long day, but finding out what was going on and finding out that I was getting to transferred was a load off. Sometimes just having a plan makes everything a little better!
I will share more a little later and bring you all up-to-date. For right now, I’m going to relax a little and wait for Carrie to get back from the waiting room. A visitor just came and she took them away from the room so that I could rest.

Thank you, all, for your on-going prayers and concern. We do appreciate your caring support very much!