Santa Baby

More progress: I can tie shoelaces and wear button-fly jeans again. I am typing this with two hands, though somewhat clumsily. I go out now without my cane. My blood sugar continues to be low.

I went to physical therapy on Monday and Sara taught me some exercises to strengthen my fingers, using rubber bands and playdough.

I really don't have any right to ask Santa for anything more this year, but I have a few requests, as you might imagine, which I'll keep between him and me.

I'm looking forward to getting the staples removed next Monday, as they are starting to hurt when I lie down and it wakes me up several times during the night.

I've disconnected all the old computer equipment and my desk looks much nicer. My new Apple wireless base station is also a 1-terrabyte backup drive that automatically backs up everything on my Macbook every hour. I hope to get more decluttering done this week, if my energy level allows.

A Good Purge

I don't know exactly why I'm so consumed by the task of decluttering my lived-in-for-eighteen-years apartment,but I am. Decluttering started officially today when Kevin and Rene took 18 boxes of books and CDs to the Friends of the SF library book donation center. Next, week, Kevin and I will box up clothes and miscellaneous crap from my hall and bedroom closets, and I'll get the neighborhood thrift shop to take away all of those boxes as well as the bookshelves emptied by today's hauling out. Then there's all my old computer equipment to recycle.

On the health front, I'm off the decadron now and my blood glucose level is going steadily down. I've had a couple of really fatigued days,and I'm taking these as reminders to nap more. My body is very slowly returning to its normal shape.

The arm and hand are stronger every day. I can turn and pull on a doorknob with my left hand provided the door itself isn't too heavy. I now consistently use both hands to wash dishes. The hand seems to remember what it used to do and I just let it try. It isn't always strong enough, but it often is. I hope this rapid improvement continues. When I can manage shirt buttons and touch-typing with two hands again, I'll know I'm fully back.

New Toys!

I think I overdid it yesterday. I've been a limp rag all day today, and felt very lucky to have Kevin and Robert to help me get my new Apple toys up and running and get files copied over from the pc, which only Robert was able to figure out.

I'm typing this on my iPad, which is a wonderful little device. I see much fun ahead with it.

As far as progress with my hand, it is much stronger in its grip and I can zip up jackets and pull up pants and I've even started giving Junie her shot using both hands. I didn't do my exercises today, but I will tomorrow. Happily, I can report that I took no insulin today, so perhaps my body is already detecting the reduction in decadron dosage.

Meanwhile, i have the diversion of new toys!

The latest feat

(taken while we sat in Peet's Coffee waiting for the house cleaners to finish my apartment.)

Just to show my progress. Today the hand can grasp and put thumb to each finger, but not with any real strength. Kevin scored me some free barbells from a neighborhood gym which will help me build up that arm soon.

I can walk almost normally. My arm automatically starts to move when I'm doing some action it would normally participate in and my hand no longer feels heavy and dead. I'm able to do way more with the therapy dough (roll, grasp, pinch) than I could before. And by the way, I zipped up that jacket by myself!

All my new Apple stuff has arrived. Kevin and I are going to tackle the cutting over project together tomorrow.

I'm exercising faithfully, so I really expect some new gain in the hand each day.

Dr. Liu Visit

I said I would blog after my appointment, though the real point of the visit was for Dr. Liu to see me in person and assess my condition. It was fun to see his delight when I showed him what my arm can do. I'm back to about the level of function I had just before the arm shut down last time, so any improvement from here on is function I haven't had in a long time. He approved my exercise plan of gradually increasing reps, weights lifted with the left arm and walking ever longer distances. He also reviewed and approved the decadron tapering schedule and devised a similar, though quicker, tapering for the dilantin, to commence a week after the last dose of decadron. As, for monitoring my blood sugar, I'll keep doing it beyond the last dose of decadron, and once my before-meal number is consistently below 126 for a week or two, I can stop monitoring. The septra to prevent pneumocystis can be discontinued once we've allowed my immune system to regenerate a bit after the decadron. I'll have a blood test in a few weeks to confirm my t-cell count has risen. Really looking forward to not having to keep track of so many meds, so many therapy apptmts, exercising twice a day, etc,

Questions I had for him:

Q: Why did they suddenly started giving me salt tablets the day before I was discharged?

A: Because of having gone through brain surgery, I somehow developed Hyponatremia. My discharge-day sodium level was normal, so I recovered very quickly from it, after two positively nauseating doses of salt tablets.

Q: Why didn't the nurses monitor my blood sugar while I was in the hospital?

A: It's a surgical service. The surgeons don't like to take responsibility for medical issues on the ward unless they have to, though Dr. Liu believes they should. This explains why a nurse actually did test my blood glucose one time. I imagine it was below 250 and so regarded as not worth dealing with.

I guess that's all I have to report on the doctor visit. I'm very excited about getting more arm strength and control and hoping for at least a little bit of progress every day.

Well, here I am

(Photo taken by Kevin today at Woodhouse Fish Company, where I can't get enough of the clam chowder nor of the lobster roll and fries.)

It's hard to believe I've survived three separate surgeries to my head in two months, let alone all the ups and downs of varying degrees of left-side disability. The human body is truly amazing. I was a bit nervous about the actual surgery this time. Last time, I mentally checked out to another plane as soon as the ER doctor told me I needed surgery, so poor Robert, as my medical power-of-attorney, was tasked with signing the consent form. At least he had the knowledge that that first tumor was life-threatening to guide him. I was choosing to gamble that Dr. Lavery could remove that little fluid sac without harm against suffering worse brain injury and losing even more left-side function. I'm not a very lucky gambler, based on my one trip to Las Vegas, but this time fortune smiled. Now that all of the mass that was pressing on my control center is gone or going, about 50% of my hearing, 30% of my arm and 70% of my leg are back.

I'm having to limit visits and outings with visitors to one lunch plus one dinner each week depending on how many med apptmts I have that same week. There are a lot of sweet, caring friends that want to visit right now, but I'm having to be chintzy with the social so I can get lots of napping in. Kevin is my virtual sleep-out roommate for the near-future anyway, and I have him in just about every day to cheerfully perform most of the little chores and errands around the place. As my arm improves, I'll need him less, and around that time my capacity for visiting will increase, too.

Yesterday's hand grasp breakthrough punctured every remaining pessimism balloon about my chance of full recovery and I can really envision myself back to normal, both in physical and mental abilities, enjoying life and creating art again.

My walking has really improved and I'm able to push myself on that front a little more each day, both in the distances I walk and in the number of reps of the leg exercises I do. Same with the arm exercise reps, but I have a lot more function to gain back there and until I get more muscle tone back from what was lost during the totally dead time, the regained neural control doesn't have the supportive strength to continue developing. I do the exercises twice a day without fail, because I am the model patient, after all, plus I'd really like to have most, if not all, of the hand back by the end of the year.

As a special treat for the "poor li'l boy who had to spend Thanksgiving in the hospital" I went online shopping the other night and bought my self a new Mac Book and an iPad. I'm switching teams, and going Apple. I can't believe that five years ago I had to buy a huge Dell tower to get the storage of something that is now the size of a notebook. I'm looking forward to getting rid of all that equipment and all the cord and wire mess, and having a nice clean surface to my desk again.

I see Dr. Liu for surgery follow-up tomorrow, so I'll post again after that.