Day 2

I did feel like I was improving on day two in the hospital. I still had a lot of pain, and medications were switched up. I was able to eat some yogurt and drink some smoothies.

I had an evaluation from physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy, mostly focused on mechanics and ways to take care of my toddler.

Speech therapy was the most concerning because I could not chew a graham cracker, and I think she realized my speech was a little slow and that I was searching for words. She wanted me to follow up in a couple of weeks. I’m really hoping this is just because it was so early and that it’s not a permanent condition.

Today I felt pretty disappointed by my family. I really wanted a child life specialist to visit with my son in the hospital. I ended up talking about this for months, so it was not a new thing. I asked for the child life consult, and they said they could meet us at 3 pm. My husband and mother-in-law, who were watching my son, disagreed with this and didn’t want to scare him by going back to the hospital. I was told being selfish and not thinking about my son. So they did not bring him over. The child life specialist was really sweet and brought us a bear with a bandanna on the side of my injury and talked to us through some books and activities that will help him understand through medical play.

It might be just early on; my emotions are everywhere, but I found this to be very upsetting.

It had been about 24 hours since my surgery, and the team was pushing me to discharge. Honestly, I was pretty worried about this. I was still pretty dizzy standing up, it was hard for me to take pills, and there’s no way I could remember to take my pills on time.

My husband took the week off to help me, but I thought that would be hard with him watching our toddler. And the thought of my pain wasn’t quite under control with the pressure behind my eye not responding well to the pain medication.

The surgeon and his PA rounded on me and said the surgery went really well; they removed more brain tissue than they were expecting, but this wasn’t a significant change from the plan. They also agreed to let me have some coffee, which might be contributing to my headache. They also prescribed Reglan, which I’ve used before, and pregnancy for migraines.

So after a long, stressful day, I was discharged home. Once we got home, my husband changed out her sheets again so they were clean. My mother-in-law brought our son over so I could see him again. He wanted to sit on my lap and to crawl over me, and wanted me to read books. I was not able to focus on the words, so I had to ask for help.

This made me really sad, but I’m hoping that every day I’m able to do a little more with him. One contributor could be that I hadn’t had any sleep.

I did start a painting this day, but I wasn’t able to finish. Painting seems to distract my brain from pain. Without tiring my eyes, feeling over stimulated.