Oct 28... A Day That Will Live in Infamy – Part Two

So, as I said, it was suddenly Halo Brace installation time. It is not as life-threatening as having your brain blasted, but it is a helluva lot more uncomfortable. I can only compare it to getting hit in the head with a sledge-hammer on four points at the same time, then after the first hit, you get hit again, and again, and again... until the pain pretty much makes you pass out because they never gave you enough anaesthetic to deaden the nerves, then they drive screws in to hold the hammers in place!

I have been in a lot of painful situations throughout my life. I have fallen off a roof, driven a chisel through my hand, dove head-first into three feet of water, had a car radiator blow-up in my face, broken more bones than I can count, ruptured my appendix, been hit in the face with a slapshot and been kicked in the crotch. I would welcome them all again to not have to get another halo brace on my head.

Dr. West and Dr. Schroder really tried their best to keep my mind off the bullets that were being attached to my skull, but apparently, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I have a resistance to anaesthetic. I remembered this as the first two “pins” were being “placed”. (Placing pins sounds so much gentler than screwing bolts, or installing beams, or drilling anchors... because these WERE NOT “pins” and WERE NOT “placed”). The doctors looked at me and said, “Are you alright?”

“Well, it hurts a bit.”

“Does it hurt or do you feel pressure?”

“Both”

“Do you feel a sharpness like a knife?”

“Oh yes, absolutely. It feels like you are hammering nails into the back of my skull.”

“OK, we are going to give you a little more anaesthetic to help deaden that for you.”

West to Schroder, “Put the whole needle in there, he is going to need a lot more.”

Me, “Damn...”, Actually, what I said was considerably more colourful that damn, it was more like that multi-purpose F-word that we all know and love!

Before this all started actually, Janis had rubbed some Botox cream on my head to help freeze it and deaden any sensation. I looked like a teenager from the bridge of my nose up... no forehead wrinkles. I asked her if I could have a couple of tubes to take with me. She laughed and said I was such a jokester... I don’t think she completely got me, I was serious.

So, anyway, after the four, 357 Magnum-sized “pins” were anchored to my skull, I was made lie down and regain my composure. Apparently I lost my entire colour, my blood pressure shot through the roof and I got dizzy before I even got to the radiation tunnel. Janis told me it happens to all guys in ‘my’ category (18 to 45 years old), we all think too much about what they are doing to us with those needles and screwdrivers. Personally, I think it is because I was so calm that she decided I did not need any drugs to help me through the day! Let this be a lesson to you... when in hospital, act worried and they will give you drugs to relax you.

This ‘lightweight’ steel frame that they use to hold you in place all day is not really very lightweight. It may only be 2 or 3 pounds, but you try to hang half a bag of sugar off 4 bolts in your head and tell me how lightweight it is! Not to mention that when you lie down, and they snap you in place so you can’t move, the two lag-bolts in the back of your head are taking all of the weight and pressure of your entire body... just try doing that for 8 hours!

After I stopped swearing at how this has to be the most ridiculous looking and most uncomfortable thing that I have ever worn, Dr. West looked at me and said, “It’s ok Kevin, the worst part of the day is over now.”

I smiled at him, “The worst part better be over, I didn’t fly across the country to be tortured, I came here to kill that little bastard in my head.”

He smiled back, “And that is exactly what we are going to do.”

“Well good then, might as well get the shitty part of the day out of the way early!”

“Yes, we might as well... that is a good way to look at it.”

You would really have to know Dr. West to really appreciate how this conversation must have seemed to him. He is quiet, gentle, friendly and probably wouldn’t say ‘shit’ if his mouth was full of it, yet he seemed to enjoy the banter with me and my attitude. I don’t think they get a lot of people in the neurosurgery unit who try to make fun out of the whole situation. It is a pretty sombre spot... I am probably not anything like their average patient.

Once my blood pressure had returned to normal, Janis came by with another needle. This was some kind of magic dye used to get a full outline of Achmed in the MRI machine. All I can say about that needle is wow... I wonder if that is the rush that you hear heroine addicts talk about? I got hot and sweaty and tingly... of course at this point, I hadn’t eaten for 12 hours either, so it is possible that hunger was starting to play a role in my behaviour.

Not even breakfast time for most people in the city and I had already gone through a days worth of crap by this time.

From Achmed and Me... Live Life!

October 28... a Day That Will Live in Infamy - Part One

By the time evening had settled on the sleepy town of Winnipeg, that cold autumn day, my head felt like the Japanese fighter pilots, in this case Dr. West and his team, had blasted the shit of the landscape know as my brain. Unlike Pearl Harbour, it won’t go down in the annals of history as the great battle that awoke a sleeping giant in the Second World War, however, it will never be forgotten in the my own personal battle with Achmed!

Oddly enough, instead of waking me (not that I am considered a giant by many people over the age of two) it pretty much put me to sleep for two weeks. Today, almost four weeks post-nuclear blast, I am finally starting to feel like I have survived the surgery and my life is starting to get back to normal. I still get tired easily, and mornings are more often harder than easier, but the dizziness is gone; the headaches are really tame for the most part; the jaw burning in not as regular as it was; my hand numbness has dwindled down to a slight tingle and the numbness in my face has lessened. I have about a 30% hearing loss in my right ear, and that is permanent, but it seems to be stable.

In the picture above, Achmed is painted red to easily pick out. The white mass he is pressing up against is my brainstem... enough said!

The events of October 28, 2009 are etched into my memory like a diamond cutting glass. Every smell, movement, conversation, needle, sound and worry are still lingering in the back of my mind. The day of my surgical blast, there were two other people on my ward getting treated as well... unfortunately for them, their prognosis was not nearly as positive as mine. If I didn’t know how lucky I am before I got out of bed that day, I certainly knew how lucky I am by the time I got back in it.

My day started with a 4:30 alarm. Even on a good day, that is not really a great way to begin... when you know that the potential, however small it may be, is that this may be the last time you ever actually get out of bed, you savour every moment of hauling your tired ass to the shower. I think I felt every drop of hot, steamy water run down my skin that morning, and I don’t believe I could name a moment in time when my senses were more in-tune with my surroundings. Only if I could have been on top of a mountain, or lying on a hot sunny beach, or at a concert... it almost seems like a waste of an experience for that sensation to be in a clean and comfortable hotel room.

The drive to the hospital was uneventful... there is not a lot of traffic on the road at 5am. By 6am I was in my hospital bed getting my vitals taken for the record. With a heart rate of 51 and an almost perfect blood pressure, Janis the nurse decided that I was calm and coherent and DID NOT need a sedative... and the valium that I was looking forward to, and possibly the only thing that I was looking forward to other than this whole mess being over, was taken from my grasp like snatching candy from a young child. I am pretty sure that the expression on my face would have been the same as that young child if I had been allowed to have a coffee and was completely awake!

Then Lynn the nurse showed up at my bed with a tray that looked similar to the torture tray that you see at the dentist office. She then took the liberty of inserting the biggest needle I had ever seen, directly into my arm, which was to stay there for the whole day so it could serve as a sort of needle port for all of my needles. This needle port was in the bend of my left elbow, and even though I was technically allowed to bend my arm, every time I did, the pain shot though me like a bolt of lightening. If I had been older and out of shape, they may have thought I was having a heart attack the first time it happened.

After all this was ready, it was time for “Meet the Surgeons” which is nothing like “Meet the Press” for any of you who watch that show. Obviously I had met Dr. West, but I still had to meet Dr. Schroder. These two guys are the nicest, most helpful people, and hopefully and by all accounts, the best at their trade. That doesn’t change the fact that I hope I never see either one of them again, especially when the literal translation to “meet the surgeons” is “go get a halo brace installed in your skull”.

I need to take a break now, lunch is over and I am starting to get queasy thinking about the next part.

From Achmed and Me... Live Life!

My Head is Back in The Game... More or Less!

So today, for the first time in about a month, I actually felt like my old self again and a series of events in the past two days have brought me out of my sluggish stupor and flying back into the face of reality.

Yesterday I got my Telecaster back from the shop with a new pickup in it; today after work I actually had a good workout at the gym, not just a ride on a stationary bike to make me feel somewhat active; then I got a $400 speeding ticket in the mail (in all the confusion and bureaucratic crap I had to deal with for the Winnipeg nuclear blast, I missed my court date a couple of days before I left… another stinging reminder of how screwed up our ‘healthcare’ system is); and finally, as I was walking into my bedroom, reading my conviction notice and thinking, “ok, no problem, no Christmas gifts for anyone this year,” I stepped right into Mikey’s breakfast… yes, my little fur-ball had puked all over my bedroom floor! A week ago Mikey could have thrown-up all over me and I probably wouldn’t have had to energy to wipe it off.

Of course, you already know that I went back to work last week, but somehow three half-days doesn’t seem like a very profound effort to re-establish myself back in the workforce. This week started off with more than half days, but not really full ones and my plan tomorrow is to actually work for the entire time that I get paid for.

I still have trouble getting going in the morning, mostly because I am not sleeping well or I have a headache. The pressure from lying on the anchor-holes in my skull, where once was attached a halo-brace, is less than comfortable after an eight hour nap. That being said, the headaches, jaw pain, balance problems and dizziness, which were all short-term effects from the radiation, seem to be disappearing at a pretty good rate. I haven’t had a burning sensation in my jaw in a couple of days and the last time I was dizzy was yesterday. The numbness in my hand is all but gone, as it is in my face. These particular effects being gone could be a side-effect of the steroids I was shot up with in Winnipeg, so it is possible that they MAY return before they hopefully go away for good.

All-in-all, I am recouping pretty well!

Today marks 3 weeks since I had 4 screws drilled into my head and got blasted with enough radiation to turn me into The Incredible Hulk, and I finally feel like I am returning to normal, or at least as normal as I probably ever will be. I have really fallen down on the job on keeping everyone informed the way I had said I would, but I will fire a few updates in here over the next week or so to fill you all in on how things really went with the surgery and how I was so incoherent after they fried my brain, that I couldn’t even order a chicken sandwich over the phone. Luckily for my tummy, the guy on the other end of the phone knew what I was trying to say and kept finishing my sentences for me… I have a few friends who might be interested in hiring him to translate for them when they go on a road trip!

From Achmed (he’s still there but hopefully actually dead now) and Me…Live Life!

Achmed's 12 Days of Sleep

Not to be confused with the 12 days of Christmas, where there is constant partying and celebration, the 12 days of sleep were just that, SLEEP.

The first day after surgery, I slept about 15 or 16 hours on and off, probably in 2 to 3 hour stints. As time went on, the sleep time became longer and the time asleep became shorter. Here I am now, realizing once again the hard way that my body is not yet ready for full-steam ahead. I still need 10 to 12 hours of sleep a day, although it seems that my afternoon naps are becoming less required if I sleep in for a bit in the morning.

This past weekend I did everything in my power to try to get myself on a ‘normal’ type of schedule. Friday night I was so bored that I went to a movie with my niece and my sister and her boyfriend… I never go to movies. In fact, the irony was not lost on me that I had spent two weeks lying on couches and beds, watching TV and movies (something that I hardly ever do anyway) and then, my first night out in civilization I went to a movie! It was good to get out of the house but I still wonder what I was thinking. I didn’t even get to see a good blood and guts movie, I saw a movie about a bunch of girls in a roller derby.

Anyway, today my intention had been to go back to work, even if it is only half days for a week or two… I am really starting to lose my mind doing nothing! It seems that between a movie on Friday night, doing odds and ends around the house on Saturday, popping into a friend’s house for a birthday party on Saturday night and going to the cabin for the day, with Mom and Dad on Sunday, I depleted my strength reserves. I went to bed at a half decent hour last night and never hauled my ass out of the rack until almost lunchtime today. And a continuing problem I still have nagging at me from the surgery is that the incisions on the back of my head are not healing as fast as the ones on the front of my head… this is leading to me waking up every morning with a driving headache from the pressure on the wounds while I sleep.

The pressure headache from the halo brace is almost gone, just some reserve tingling on the back of my head and directly on the scars on my forehead. The roaring in my ear has mellowed for the most part. It is still there, and most likely always will be, but the frequency seems to be more constant lately. The burning sensation in my jaw still comes and goes, but it also seems to be lessening and lasting for shorter periods of time when it pops up.

My finger numbness has lessoned and my facial numbness seems to be less severe than it was, although my right eye gets tired easily and looks like it is half closed when I start to fade. The headaches seem to be controlled for the most part, by advil and tylenol, although I am eating them like candy. Some of the lessening symptoms could be a side effect of the steroids, and now that they have probably cleared my system those symptoms may return again temporarily.

The two symptoms which concern me the most are the sudden dizziness I experience and what seems like chronic fatigue. The doc says that these will fade over the next few weeks; they are just residual effects from the radiation and not to worry. Well, a different doctor told me not to worry when he said I had a brain tumor, he words didn’t seem to help me much at that time either.

Between dizziness and tiredness I haven’t been able to update this venue like I had planned… although I originally told my boss I would be back in the office a few days after I got home. I am not sure if I am being overly ambitious in my return to life or just not realistic in the expectations that I have put on my recovery. I am healthy and strong, I really didn’t think I would be laid up for so long!

So, it seems that ultimately I should be able to get back to work this week… my productivity rate has still to be determined. And in case you are wondering right now, yes, I am going to take it easy for a few weeks. Afterall, I don’t want to be laid up for the Christmas party season:)

From Achmed and Me… Life Life!

Achmed Back on The Rock

So, finally I am back here for a brief update on what happened to me last week. Apparently my confidence level in my healing abilities far outweighed the reality of my situation.

I had every desire to keep the blog updates going as I recovered from the nuclear blast, it seems however that my desire to sleep coupled with the biggest headache I have ever even heard of, were at complete odds with my good intentions. Actually, that may be slightly inaccurate... it would be better put to say that my intended desires were over-ruled by my sleep desires!

To make a long, and somewhat foggy, story short, I am starting to feel better today after four days of what I can only describe as the worst possible hangover that you could all collectively imagine. I have been kicked in the crotch and doubled over in so much pain that I almost threw-up and I would choose that again over having four screws drilled into my head while I was awake!

As it turned out, and I already knew this and have NO IDEA how I could have possibly forgotten, I have a tolerance to local atheistic. I found this out the hard way when I was in my early 20s and had to get my wisdom teeth out... I suppose it is possible that the wisdom of this particular knowledge was removed along with the four perfectly healthy, and severely impacted, teeth at the back of my mouth. When the dentist started digging my teeth out, I screamed and almost hit the roof. I can only compare it to some kind of medieval mouth-torture. In the past I have occasionally wondered if the dentist was just too cheap to use enough novocaine and that was the actual problem that day in the chair. After feeling the sensation of knives digging into my skull, I am absolutely sure that I have a resistance to deadening needles and I am now absolutely positive, and in no uncertain terms will I ever forget, this fact about my own personal biology if I ever need any local atheistic again! The recovery may take a little longer, but it beats feeling sharp things dig into you.

Wednesday was painful and uncomfortable, Thursday I fell in and out of consciousness all day and Friday I flew home, in what was one of the worst cross-county travel experiences I have ever had. Saturday and Sunday I mostly slept on and of all day and today I hauled my wounded ass out of the rack at close to lunchtime.

My headaches are improving and I am sleeping for longer, less interrupted periods each day. The swelling from the four incisions is going down and today, for the first time since Wednesday, I have been able to open my eyes completely for extended periods.

Over the next few days I will get the details of the surgery and the trip home here for anyone interested. All I can say about my trip home is... I flew Air Canada! Anyone who does a bit of travel can probably guess a fair bit of my story on that subject.

I cannot express enough gratitude to the surgical team in Winnipeg and to all of you who have kept me on top of your thoughts and prayers over the last while. By all accounts from the doctors, Achmed has been completely blasted and there is no reason for me not to have a full recovery and go on to lead a normal and productive life. I won’t get confirmation of that for 12 months, but I feel positive about it and I am going to be living as if all was normal as soon as my head is no longer feeling like it is in a vice, without the aid of little orange pills.

From Achmed and Me... Live Life!