My brother Steve - Part 2 ("Spectacular")

Surgery in Iowa City Monday morning at 8:00am (arrive at 6am with all brothers/sisters + Mary Joan). Surgery to be 10 hours (ooooooooooof). Much sitting around and staring at one another with intermittent bouts of racous laughter. Mixdorfs can find humor anywhere. With no knowledge of Steve's situation we saw the relatives of other patients come and go through the course of the day, some of whom had received sad news - nothing funny in that.

At 5:30pm the doctors finally arrived to give us the news that things had gone well and that Steve had been a 'spectactular patient.' For those of you who have forgotten already, this surgery was performed with local anesthetic only, so that Steve could be awake and talk to them during it. It's important for them to know that they haven't screwed up any higher functions - seems like it would be a little late to discover it, but I'll assume there is a method to their madness. Steve also was part of a national hearing study, performed on people having brain surgery, to try to improve the technology of hearing aids - that was a couple hours of the 10 hours.

So at that point, much relieved, we grabbed some food in the cafeteria, and then moved our stuff to a new waiting room, this one specifically for the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. We waited their for an hour or so until we could see Steve. He was incredibly groggy but also got in a few funny comments. After answering in only 1 word answers for 4 or 5 questions, my sister Kathy asked if he could say more than 1 word. His reply......"I can." We left him to sleep and planned to return the next day.

Karen and Mary had to work Tuesday so Kathy, Tom, Mary Joan and I spent the night in Iowa City, returning to the hospital for the 9:30 visiting time (15 minutes every 2 hours). We siblings took turns going in with Mary Joan and seeing him. He was more vocal and less sleepy, but the conversations were limited. They thought they would keep him in SICU for another night since it wasn't crowded. Kathy, Mary Joan and I left after the 1:30 visit to return Mary Joan to Waterloo and drive to Toledo for the night. Tom stayed for another round of visiting and then drove back to Indiana.

Kathy and I returned to Iowa City the next day to visit Steve. He had been moved to their Neuro unit, out of Intensive Care, the evening before. He was more awake and talkative, but 5 hours of sitting around a hospital room is excruciatingly boring. He had a walk and was progressing well. KAthy and I headed back to Toledo at 3:00pm.

I left for MA Thursday morning from CR. Karen, Kathy and Mary dropped me off at the airport on their way to IC. I learned that Steve had a few more walks and may be discharged on Sunday, 6 days after brain surgery.

At this point it's not clear whether the surgery was a success (50-70% rate of success) but everyone is encouraged by how well he seems to have done. He will be on his heavy-duty epilepsy meds for the next year as they determine the efficacy of the procedure, so it may be a while before any significant effects are apparent. I will update as new info is available.