another day...

I hope you enjoy the pictures..
The first is of my brain prior to surgery on April 28th. Dr Milhorat and Dr Bolognese did my decompression surgery. I was wheeled into the OR right on the dot. I was sooo scared to have surgery on my brain/neck. I introduced myself and tried to remember their names. I met around 8-10 people in the OR. Dr Carras was responsible for anesthesia. Dr Remy was in the OR, and I was introduced finally to Dr Milhorat. I was thrilled to meet him since he was the one that started TCI. The foresight on his part, and knowledge of chiari and the associated syndromes. Anyways, trying to get the IV line started well it was tough, Dr Carras had to try again. He managed on the second try, and soon enough I was asleep. Then I was brought back up, and there was like screws on the side of my head, and I felt like I looked like a deer caught in the headlights, searching around on how to get out of there. The doctors asked questions of how I felt with different levels of weight added to determine how much degree would be when they did the extraction fusion. When they released all the weight, I told them I felt like a toad.
Then ASLEEP again. When I came to, I was thrashing around in horrid pain, and I could hear the recovery room staff saying things like "we have given her something, something" and mercifully they put me back under again. All I could communicate was crying "I hurt, I hurt" over and over again.
When I came to again, I was in another room, called a PACU, and Dennis came in for a very short time to see me. It was so good to see him, but I was so drugged up I just remember seeing his smiling face and he looked sooo worried.
I spend the night in PACU and then the next day I was moved to NICU where I spent two days. I slept a lot. I kept getting tangled up in the wires/cords to the morphine pump, and getting woke up by the nurses for the heparin shots. Teeny tiny needles that had to be injected into my tummy. The back of my head was wrapped in that brown stretchy tape.
I think it was the second day I met Dr Kula, Denise and was asked different questions, and was told to move my neck. Well I had heard some horror stories about how if you don't move your neck, they move it for you. I didn't care how much it hurt, I was gonna move it NO MATTER WHAT..I didn't want someone else doing it for me.
On the second day, I did dangle my legs over the side, but it was quite the production to take a walk and by the time all the stuff was done, well I was done. Energy levels were down, and I would just roll back into bed(like a log just like I was told)
On the end of the second day I did some Hall Walking...didn't need a hall pass for that. Dennis escorted me, and it was short, but I did it. The third day, I didn't want him to help too much cause I wanted out of there, but as long as you are hooked up to the morphine pump you have to stay in the hospital. I was kinda scared to get out, I didn't want any of the complications that are mentioned after decompression surgery, extraction fusion.
So, after four days total in PACU/NICU I went to the regular ward, and spent two days there. Pretty noisy. I got spoiled in the NICU, own special nurse. Yikes how the other half lives. LOL. Nice people. Always calling me "honey" and "sweetie" but I didn't get the "good food" BAD BAD FOOD!!
So, I had surgery for Chiari, retroflexed odontoid, Eagles Syndrome, and fusion. Laminectomy c1, partial laminectomy c2, fusion c3/4.
Still in the recovery process right now