Hospital, day 2

Wow - there's a lot to say already, but I'll just sum up so far, and fill in the holes in a second.

We got here at 6am yesterday, waited a bit, filled out some papers and talked a bit, put in the IV and rolled me into surgery.  I remember being wheeled into the OR and seeing about 8 people in the OR.

About 9 hours of surgery later, we were done.  I woke up not being able to do much of anything.  My back was nice and stiff, and IIRC my arms and legs were too.  The surgery was, naturally, face down, and took longer than expected.

It was supposed to be 4-6 hours, but they had to dig the tumor out of the spinal coord branches moreso than they thought.

It turned out not to be a myxopapillary ependymoma, but a schwanoma.  Theoretically, that's better.  He said he got it all out, but 5% of what could be remaining scar tissue or more tumor remained behind.

I don't remember waking up, or for a bit later...

The rest of yesterday was uneventful - I tried to sleep most of it and didn't eat very much, as eating started to upset my stomach.  I was also supposed to be on "flat back rest", as I had lost a bunch of spinal fluid, and raising up would cause a big headache.

My upper thighs killed like crazy - apparently they were resting on something for all 9 hours and they still hurt.

The doctor comes in this morning and tells us he wants us to get off IV drugs today, and probably to walk today.  Right now I am inclined about 35-40 degrees up, and when we hit 90 we can start walking.  He had me lift my legs (while I was still laying) and I was afraid this would cause an undue burden on my back, but turned out not to, and the more I lifted it, the less they hurt.

They have already taken out the IVs too, and I am on Perkocet.  Then they took me for another MRI, during which I had no math problems to think about.  So far, I'm not in a lot of pain.

Oh, one more crazy thing - all, my heart rate monitor kept beeping.  Kept going below 50.  I think my at-rest-sitting heart rate is around 75, so my laying-doped-up-sleeping heart rate is around 48.  So they adjusted the machine, and we could get some sleep. That, and I would move my arms around and kink the oxygen tubes.

Sorry this is not terribly cohesive or organized.  I'm not going to fix it :)