Diary of an Emotional Husband

What?  Two blog entries by Andrew in a single day?  There must be some whack stuff going on these days that require me to manage the cyberspace informational portal!  Well, as you all well know, there is some stuff going on.  I am sure if you are reading this, you may have seen a post or two regarding the topic at hand and know what the deal is.

Well, the day of Carrie's surgery has come and gone.  It felt like an eternity for this day to get here, but for some reason it sneaked up on us faster than we could blink and get things ready for.  It has been a roller coaster of emotions for everyone involved in this, let alone what Carrie must be thinking (other than she probably has a massive f***ing headache right now!).  For me, this has been the scariest thing I have ever dealt with.  But, as I've been told multiple times by several people "There is nowhere to go but up now!"  

Today has been one of the longest days I've had in quite a while.  It started out getting here around 10am.  We checked in with registration, got our tazer (the buzzer/notifier thingy) and sat on down.  My Dad and Carrie's Mom and Dad chilled out with us for a while during the wait.  It didn't take long for them to call Carrie back for pre-op prepping.  I was able to go back with her and keep her company while they prepped her.  After they prepped her, the Mother and Fathers came back to hang for another trip down eternity of time.  Got to see Carrie go through the medicine induced drunkenness to start the anesthesia process.  There was plenty of inappropriate comments and jokes made, but we wouldn't expect anything less than that.

Things ran long, but they finally kicked us out around 1:30 to take her back to start poking more holes in her skin and veins to plug in more IV's and monitors.  We all left the building for a short lunch break since we knew the procedure wouldn't get started right away.  About 2:40, my Dad was back at the waiting room and got the page saying they had just wheeled her back into the operating room.  We hauled ass finishing lunch and skee-dattled back to the waiting room.

And we sat.  And sat and sat and sat and sat and sat and sat.  And sat and sat and sat and sat and sat and sat.  And sat and sat and sat and sat and sat and sat.  And sat and sat and sat and sat and sat and sat.  And sat and sat and sat and sat and sat and sat.  And sat and sat and sat and sat and sat and sat.  Then, around 6pm, my cell phone started ringing.  It was the nurse from the Operating Room calling to give us an update.  Apparently, the nurse from the first shift was supposed to have called us with an update, but that did not happen.  No biggie.

 Apparently, the procedure did not actually start until 4pm, due to other things they had to setup.  They weren't sure if they were halfway or not.  She said that everything was going great and Carrie was doing fantastic through it all so far.  So, then there is more waiting.  It started to dawn on me that they called it a waiting room for a reason.  Well, as it turns out, we were the last ones in the waiting room.  Everyone else had gotten to go the heck out of Dodge already.  We were all fidgeting with phones and computers and starting blankly at the TV screen.

During all of this waiting and fidgeting, I was playing with the MRI scan data and was able to convert Carrie's images to a 3-D CAD file!  I still have some work to do, but if I remove the bone structures from the picture that you see here, her brain will be fully imaged in 3 dimensional wonderful glory.  I hope to build a scale model of her brain on my equipment at work!

 

I was even able to find the tumor in the converted MRI data.  It is probably hard to see, but it is pretty close to dead center on the picture, maybe lightly to the right of center:

That at least kept me entertained for a while!  As time marched on, things started to get more real.  All of a sudden, we looked up at the status board and Carrie's surgery slot changed from yellow to red, which mean the surgery was over!  It then quickly changed to blue, which meant she was no longer in the O.R.  A few minutes later, Dr. Grossi showed up in the waiting room.  He said the surgery went perfectly according to plan.  Everything was as they were expecting it to be.  There were no surprises when they went in there.  They removed from just behind the tumor up to the temporal tip.  

Carrie then had a post-op CT to confirm there was no additional bleeding in the surgery site.  It was clean.  We then moved up to the ICU waiting room.  We hung out there for a while.  Next thing you know a bed stops in front of the waiting room door and a nurse asks to see us.  They had Carrie.  She was being taken to ICU after her CT.

That is when Shit Just Got Really Really Real for me.  It was hard for me to see her in that condition even though I know it was for the best to get rid of that damn tumor.  I felt completely powerless and helpless, but I...we....all know that it is the best thing that could have happened right now.  They got her setup in the ICU room and there she lays.  It has been hard not to get teary eyed over the whole thing just looking at her.  She is my everything and I want it all to be better right now.  Everything is on the way up from here, though, so please don't ever let me forget that. 

Let the recovery begin.

Rollin' with Doapy

Hey there fellow blog readers!  Andrew here again.  I am sitting here in the waiting room right now after just leaving Carrie's side.  She was just wheeled back to the second pre-op stop before the operating room.  Things were pushed a bit later than normal due to a previous surgery running long.  At least this got our Doctor warmed up and ready to go.  Surgery was scheduled for probably 12:15, but got pushed to after 1:30.  

Carrie is doing quite well.  They had her doped up on some pretty good meds for a while there, but they started to wear off towards the end of our hold out in the pre-op room.  Kinda reminded me of those nights where a few too many whiskey-sours were gone through...wait...there is not such thing as too many whiskey-sours!

Here are a few shots from our stay in pre-op:

 Above: Carrie trying to pose for a goofy picture, but my camera was too slow, which resulted in laughing

 Above: Nuf said.

 Above: Much better!

Above: She is doped up on the good stuff here.

Overall, she is doing really well.  Since all of the pre-op stuff was done several days ago, there was a lot less prep work to do.  They will be setting up all of the IV lines and what not as things move along.  They will probably be getting down into the good stuff here in about an hour or so.

More updates to come...

The Night Before

So here we are the night before.

It's very surreal.

I can't wrap my head around what tomorrow is

and

what it may be like.

This has been a weird week to say the least.

We found out where Aidan will go to Kindergarten.

He's so excited and so are we!

Aidan's eyes are clear and his cough is much better now.

Today, Logan seemed to take a turn for the worse.

His eyes got worse, his nose ran more, he began a nasty cough and started to run a fever.

We also found out the results of his tests that were done at Duke.

We will need to schedule a follow up visit for more tests.

I don't really know what the results mean,

I guess we'll find out when a follow up is scheduled.

They are supposed to call Andrew tomorrow.

Baby D is doing well. A little nasty nose and super clingy to Mama.

He is also finally cutting his two year old molars.

My Aunt came in from out of town and has been helping out this week.

This way they Boys get some time with her before I am out of commission.

She has been a HUGE help.

I guess that big part people want to know...

I talked to Dr. Grossi this afternoon.

The hospital never called to “confirm” my arrival time.

So

I guess it is still 10:00am

like they told me a while ago.

Dr. Grossi said I am on his schedule for noon

and the procedure will last 3 hours.

Then he said he would probably finish up around 3 or 4p.

Last week Dr. Henderson mentioned a post-op CT that I will probably sleep through too.

It's going to be a long day for everyone out in the waiting room.

They are sending the tumor off for pathology.

We asked about our plan post-op.

Later this week I will have ANOTHER MRI.

This will be the MRI that the Dr. Friendman's at the Tumor Center want to see.

Dr. Grossi said in 1-2 months I will follow up with the Tumor Center

and I will then be in their hands.

So, unless I have any other surgical needs I will be done with him.

At the Tumor Center they will determine which protocol they want me to be on.

He mentioned if it is a “wait and watch” approach

it could be something like a 3 month, 3 month,

6 month, 6 month...as long as all looks good.

So who knows.

I don't really care about that right now just want a vague idea of where we go after this surgery.

My Neurosurgeon will be on call this week so

if I need anything while I am there he will be the one I see.

He also reminded me not to read too much into my MRI report. *With Duke we get access to the reports the Dr's get.

Then told me to try and get some sleep tonight.

We shall see how that works.

So far I haven't hit the insomnia like I had before the biopsy.

If all else it will give me time to feel like I can get a few more things done.

We are hoping to get there early tomorrow so we can pick up the copy of my MRI

for Andrew to take to work so they can make a small 3D version of my skull.

Andrew works in Rapid Prototyping...if you have seen his work you would understand.

Thank you Everyone for all of your nice thoughts and Prayers for us.

We are so incredibly appreciative for them and are feeling their presence already.

Andrew will try and keep people updated tomorrow either on here or Facebook.

Papa Bear Needs a Helping Hand

Hey there everyone!  This is Andrew typing up a blog this time around. This might just be my first blog post on here!  Feeling special that you are one of the privileged people to read my handy work?  Good!  Well, I have made my way to the blogger section of cyberspace to ask for some pretty hefty assistance.

As you all know, Carrie's surgery is just around the corner. Once the doctors root around her head with a couple of sticks and put her back together, she will be completely out of commission for about 6 weeks. I will get to be both Mom and Dad!  I am normally a major stubborn butthole when it comes to asking for help, but I am not going to be this time around. We already have a fantastic family support network that we will be tagging for quite a bit, but, as the Little Einsteins say "WE NEED MORE POWER!"

This is where you all come in. Many of you have already expressed interest in helping with meals for the kids or helping with childcare.  As the Dom (Dad/Mom combined) of the house while Carrie is out of commission, I need some help mainly with meals, but there will be other stuff.  If it was my choice, we would be alternating chicken nuggets and cheese burgers everyday, but I guess we need some variety in our diets.

I have setup a care calendar to help organize some of this stuff, including meals and visits for Carrie. This calendar can be accessed here:

The HELPER logon is used by family and friends
that would like to sign-up to help a loved one.

To access Carrie Rogers's personal CareCalendar site,
visit http://www.carecalendar.org/logon/141259 and enter
the following information in the appropriate spaces:

     CALENDAR ID   :   141259
     SECURITY CODE :   7765

This is the info right from the calendar site. I will be adding stuff as needs arise, so check back in from time to time. Any help would be greatly appreciated. We are already more grateful than you could imagine for the love and care we have gotten from friends and family throughout all of this so far.  We will definitely want visitors to the house to help keep Carrie company, so if you think you can get away with dropping something off and running, you are dead wrong.  

My email address is asrogers1981@gmail.com. Please feel free to contact me anytime with questions you have about anything you can think of. I am not Dr. Phil, so please keep your questions in the right scope!  Thanks for reading!  Let the madness begin!