7.13.11

AYNSLEY:
Mom got very lucky last night. One of her girlfriends was over and saw the seeping near her incision and mentioned it to her doctor husband when she got home. He immediately called Dad and told him to go to urgent care right away. So, at 8pm, they traveled by ambulance back to Bellevue urgent care. Mom's neurosurgeon was out of town, but had a great surgeon covering for him. He was on his way home when he heard about Mom, came and took a look, put away his car keys and scrubbed up.

Mom was leaking cerebral spinal fluid.

The neurosurgeon re-sutured her up, being extremely careful not to stitch too tightly or too loose, and they were on their way back to the Kline. The whole ordeal was about 3 hours. The surgeon explained that this could have been fatal-Mom could have continued to loose too much CSF and she was at heightened risk of a brain infection, which would have been game over.

I feel so so fortunate that we have such an amazing team of knowledgeable advocates in our inner circle. Our doctor friend has been crucial-he speaks the language, explains procedures, knows when urgent care needs to be called but is still first and foremost our loving friend.

When I mentioned that Gary and I are planning a home birth to our MD friend during my last visit, he stared at me, confused. "Where are you going to put the stirrups?!" he asked. I've been chuckling about that comment for weeks now, and when I relayed last night's events to Gary this afternoon, he promptly said "we need to get MD some stirrups as a thank you gift." I don't know if this is humorous to anyone but me, but I find it a classic example of the way my husband thinks and keeps me sane. The first thing he jumps to is birthing stirrups as a thank you gift for quite possibly prolonging Mom's life. Brilliant.

Mom, of course, is taking everything like a champ. She took a full dose of pain medicine last night after the stitching and was able to make it through the night comfortably. So today she only took half a dose and was doing fine. Her head aches, but not terribly. She still had a good appetite today and slept well. Her blood pressure is good, her temperature is normal, she doesn't have an infection and she's still on track to complete her antibiotics this weekend. All in all, an extremely positive outcome. I still can't believe how lucky we were.