Catching Up

The purpose of this Web Blog is to keep family and friends informed of Kathy’s progress in a single easy to access web page. Whenever you want to quickly update yourself about Kathy, come to this site. You can post comments (we encourage you to do so) and it will include links and other information. Since I started this blog site early this week, I need to catch up and get current. Let’s review the highlights and lowlights from Thursday August 10th through Wednesday August 16th.

Thursday Aug 10th:

We spent the morning trying to figure out what happened. Dr. Kureshi was extremely helpful walking us through each step and what to expect over the next few days. He basically reiterated that Kathy was in severe danger from the abscess. The abnormality he originally identified in her brain CT turned out to be a burst abscess. It had burst deep inside her brain and flowed directly into her ventricles, the liquid area between the brain and the skull, circling the brain. He needed to identify the bacteria in a culture to identify for proper treatment. Over the course of the next 24 hours the team ultimately discovered the bacteria’s type and began administering penicillin. It was sad to witness all of the tubes running into Kathy. She remained unresponsive from the impact of the heavy post surgery medication. Dr. Kureshi warned us to take things day by day. He was looking to concentrate only on keeping Kathy’s brain alive.

Friday Aug 11th:

Family arrived early and spoke to Dr. Kureshi concerning Kathy’s morning condition. He was alarmed about Kathy’s sudden spike in brain pressure. (A normal brain pressure is measured in the 1-10 range and it would take standing on your head to even reach 15.) Kathy’s brain pressure was hovering around 50 and at one point had shot up to 80. He told us that without quick relief, there were only two options. Remove a section of her skull to relieve the pressure but risk heavy post surgery brain damage. The other option was even worse, the brain would eventually succumb to the pressure and Kathy’s brain would be dead. The penicillin was working but also increasing pressure by creating a high volume of puss. The drain installed into Kathy’s head was not large enough to keep up with the debris volume resulting in rising pressure. Dr. Kureshi decided to put Kathy into a medical coma to stop all of her brain activity and give her a better chance to fight the battle. We all got together afterwards, family and friends, assuming all was grave. We prayed for her survival that day.

Saturday Aug 12th:

By Saturday morning, Kathy’s pressure had dropped into the mid 20’s. Everyone was greatly relieved and our thoughts of morbidity had turned into a small ray of hope. I looked around Kathy’s bed and could not believe anyone could have more tubs and IV’s running in and out, including Phenobarbital to induce coma, Vecurionium to freeze muscle activity (paralyze) and Propful for pain and sedation. Dr. Kureshi was glad to see her pressures drop but gave us no encouraging words. It was another long night.

Sunday Aug 13th:

Sunday was a special day because many local churches had Kathy on their prayer lists and many family and friends were in attendance. Upstairs in the Hospital, Adam and Amy were having their first baby, a beautiful girl named McKenzie, to everyone’s delight and joy. The morning started great as Kathy bounced back and forth from 8 to15 pressure. Her exit tube had cleared from a white puss filled line into a lighter yellow color fluid. (The proper color is like Fiji Water-clear) We had progressed, the nurses were encouraged and everyone had a sigh of relief. The on-call nurses felt Kathy’s elevated heart rate was telling them she was in pain and began administering Morphine too. On Saturday both nurses hinted that more activity from the doctors could occur Monday morning. Maybe something that would give a hint about her mental state? Things looked good when late Sunday they administered that last bag of Phenobarbital. Get up early tomorrow-we got news to hear.

Monday Aug 14th

We all got to the hospital early hoping for a sighting of her Neurologists. This was the day we were going to know something! That idea flew out the windows immediately when Dr. Kureshi told us he decided to slowly step down the removal of Kathy’s medications as not to upset her delicate balance. Suddenly we realized she would take days not hours to get out of her coma. The good news was her pressure had dropped into single digits and her fluid color was light yellow. The nurses that afternoon removed the Phenobarbital station completely and started to crank down the Vecurionium and the Propful. Hurry up and wait.

Tuesday Aug 15th

I called early Tuesday morning and the night nurse said everything was doing about as good as possible. Pressure continued to stay low and her brain fluid was getting lighter and lighter. Dr. Kureshi was in morning surgery as we waited to soak up any news. He finally showed and again reminded us that Kathy would take days and days to awake from her narcotic induced sleep. The afternoon wore on and I visited Kathy just before the shift change. I was denied entrance at first because of all the commotion of a just arriving gunshot victim. I finally got in but all the emergency nurses were attending the shooting victim. I went straight to talk to Kathy and out of the blue she opened both her eyes, scarring me. I could tell immediately she recognized me and my voice. I was so shocked and happy I could not contain myself! The nurses returned and confirmed that Kathy had awakened and passed some recognition tests. I rushed out and called everyone immediately and it was great to hear the excitement on everyone’s voice. Our Kathy was back and not one second to soon.

Wednesday Aug 16th:

The morning was a whirlwind of activity as everyone came by to see Kathy’s awake. The nurse warned us not to get her too excited and not to ask her to move parts of her body for us because that was her job not ours. Kathy had improved lucidity this morning and her range of motion had improved from last night. She not only showed us selected fingers, but had strong hand movement and some movement in her legs. The left side of her body is much better than the right. She favors her left and the nurse prescribed that we do all we can to get her to greet us on the right side. Anyway, that would be addressed in her physical therapy sessions. Dr. Kureshi stopped by in the afternoon and was very positive. He said he was “greatly encouraged” by Kathy’s recovery. Combine that with our nurse commenting “she had never seen anything like her recovery in 25 years” made us feel like nothing else.

Tonight Kathy was sleeping from her long day of visitors. I came in around 8:00 PM and she awoke to me and made good eye contact. She reached up and grabbed my hand acknowledging I was there. Her night doctors came by and were concerned about a little stomach bleeding (ulcer) that appeared this afternoon. Besides the possible ulcer they spent most of the time reviewing other medical issues, not her brain, so it appears there focus is more on her general health than just her head. What a great drive home! We love you Kathy.