She's Home

After a long day of waiting for the doctor, my Mom finally got the ok to go home. She was MORE than ready to leave her room, come home and sleep in her own bed and eat some good food. She will be getting waited on hand and foot and can't wait to catch up on her Tivo shows. The nursing staff were so wonderful at the hospital, they took excellent care of my Mom and spent quite a bit of time visiting with the 4 of us in her room. I think they appreciated having such an easy patient! Her physical therapist told me the whole surgical floor was talking about how quickly she was recovering. It is a huge relief for our family to have her back at home, we are all going to sleep a lot better tonight. God blessed our Mom this week for her surgery and we pray He will continue to watch over her during her recovery and while we wait for the results from her tumor biopsy.

Beauty Queen

My Mom is downright perky this morning! They removed the drain from her head early this morning and she said she feels much more comfortable now that its out. She was up and walking around the hall again this morning with physical therapy and even got to take her first shower. She does get really tired after moving around for short periods of time and then starts having trouble finding her words (totally normal after the surgery she had).

Taryn fixed her up with a very fashionable head scarf because she has been feeling self conscious about her bandage. Her speech is getting better everyday and she's just mixing up a few of her words now and then. She actually sent my sister a text message this morning, which made perfect sense to us :)

There is a little bit of talk from the nurses about sending her home today. Her nurse just came in to remove her IV, which is almost always a good sign that a patient is going home. We are just waiting for her surgeon to make his rounds and give us the final word. When she does get to home we are going to make sure she lays low and gets lots of rest and won't be able to have visitors stopping by the house for at least a week or so. We really want her to have a nice quiet environment to heal up and get her strength back. We would also like to ask that family and friends call either my Dad's, Taryn's or my cell phone instead of our home phone. The blog is also a great place to leave her messages, we've been reading the comments to her daily. Check back soon, we will let everyone know when she's heading home.

Up and moving!

This afternoon about 2:30 my Mom got the ok to leave ICU and go out to the main surgical floor. She got bumped from a clear liquid diet straight up to a regular diet and was so excited to have a couple bites of turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. The oncall surgeon came into visit her shortly before she left ICU and told her she was doing fabulous. She now has her own private room on the 3rd surgical floor and was already up and walking around in the hallway with the physical therapist.

All of her nurses and aids cannot believe how well she's doing moving around on her own. The pain comes and goes depending on her activity level, so we are making sure she's getting as much rest as possible. Mac and Skye were able to come in and see her for a little while today, they have been so wonderful and supportive to our family. Dad hasn't left my Mom's side since yesterday and is learning quite a few nursing skills :) More updates to come tomorrow.

"I Will Survive"

After getting a good night's sleep my Mom is feeling good this morning. We were sitting in her room watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Someone was singing I Will Survive and she says "I love this song" and starts dancing her feet around in the hospital bed. Taryn pampered her this morning with some face lotion and a massage :) Dr. Goldman came in to check on her at 1:30am this morning and said she looked terrific. They took her in for a CT scan at 3am to check for any extra swelling or bleeds from the surgery and things look good.

Her head is bothering her a little more today than yesterday but the pain is tolerable she says. She was able to have some clear fluids this morning for breakfast (juice, tea) and can't wait for some chicken broth and jello for lunch, she's "starving" she says! It sounds like the plan is to move her out of ICU later this afternoon and up to the main floor.

With everything going on with my Mom's surgery I woke up this morning and almost completely forgot it was Thanksgiving. We were so lucky to be able to celebrate early with our family last Sunday. But we want to wish everyone a very wonderful Thanskgiving, please eat lots of turkey and pumpkin pie for us. Love you all!!

Out of surgery

After sitting in the waiting room for what felt like eternity, we were able to get the good news that the surgery went well and Mom was in the recovery room. The surgeon told us that Mom woke up talking before she was even off the operating room table. This was very reassuring to Dr. Goldman, especially after operating so close to the language center in her brain. But we weren't really surprised, my Mom has always been a talker! He was very impressed with her ability to speak and communicate right off the bat after such an invasive surgery. She recovered very well in post-op, her vitals are stable and she has full use of her arms and legs.

They transferred her up to ICU for close observation for the night and we've already been in to see her. Amazingly she looks pretty good for coming out of a 5 hour brain surgery. Her head is wrapped up nice and cute and she has wires connected to her everywhere. I feel so helpful being able to tell her what she is hooked up to and why. She's very talkative and we have to keep reminding to her to not bob her head around while she's talking to us. Most of all she is extremely relieved to have the surgery over with. She has been blessed with some very sweet and attentive nurses, who have all happened to be male. I told her she lucked out because "murses" are rare in this profession. We are taking turns being with her in ICU and just trying to let her rest, the plan is for her to be transferred up to the floor tomorrow sometime.

Thank you everyone for all the messages you left today on our phones, through the blog and email. My mom told me to tell everyone that she is doing great and not to worry! Easier said than done, but I'm looking at her right now in the hospital bed and am in awe of what a fighter my Mom is. More updates to come tomorrow I promise.

Playing the waiting game...

We know we have a lot of people watching the clock just like we are, so we just wanted to let everyone know that my Mom is still in surgery and we haven't heard anything yet. Dr. Goldman told us my Mom would be out of surgery hopefully by noon and he would come out to the waiting room to tell us how things went. She slept very well last night and seemed very chipper and positive this morning, go figure my Mom has always been such a morning person :) My sister, Dad and I were allowed to hang out with her in pre-op this morning and distract her a little. She got a little emotional right before they took her back, but we did our best to reassure her that everything will be just fine. Please keep the positive thoughts and prayer coming, we will keep you posted as soon as we hear the good news.

Week of Mom's Surgery

Welcome to the Smith Family Blog. We wanted to create a place for all of our wonderfully supportive family & friends to go for the most recent updates on my Mom.

Just to recap the last couple week's events...on November 6th around noon my mom was doing some housework at home and started feeling strange. She remembers not being able to read a recipe, feeling very confused and having difficulty talking (saying things to my dad like "zoogle"). Luckily my Dad was home and immediately took her to the hospital. My mom had a seizure in the car just before arriving to the hospital and was unconcious when my dad pulled up to the ER. In the ER her vitals were stable and she slowly started to come to but her memory and speech were jarbled (very common post-seizure). Her CT scan came back clear but her MRI scan found a very tiny tumor in the left frontal lobe of her brain. They are calling the tumor a Meningioma, a very small, slow growing and usually benign tumor. Most likely my Mom has had the tumor for years and for some reason all of a sudden it caused irritation in her brain which caused the seizure. The location of the tumor (your language center lies in the left side of the brain) explains her confusion and difficulty speaking.

So yes my family was very scared to learn that my Mom has a brain tumor, but this is the way we've been trying to look at the situation. We really are very lucky that my Mom had the seizure because it alerted us there was a problem. So many people that experience seizures never learn what causes them and they are forced to be on medication for the rest of their lives in hopes of controlling them. Within hours of my Mom's first seizure, we knew exactly what caused it and had a very clear treatment plan for her. All of her doctors strongly recommended surgery to remove the tumor and my Mom quickly agreed.

Since being discharged from the ER, my Mom has been on a very high dose of antiseizure medication which makes her feel a little dizzy and weak, but has prevented her from having any more seizures. We met with her neurosurgeon on November 11th and he strongly recommended a craniotomy as soon as possible to remove the tumor. After viewing the MRI he believes the tumor is in fact a Meningioma and is most likely not malignant, but we will only know for sure after it is removed and biopsied. My mom is the perfect candidate for this surgery...her & my dad have been working out and eating very healthy the last couple months and are both in the best of health. The neurosurgeon even told my Mom she looked "very buff these days" at her first consultation in the office. Dr. Goldman knows my family well by this point (he performed back surgery on both my Grandma and Dad and I scrubbed in to observe a couple of his surgeries in nursing school) and will be performing my mom's surgery at St. Joseph's on Wednesday November 25th at 7:30 am. The surgery is expected to last between 4-6 hours due to the very advanced technology they will be using to locate the tiny tumor. She will spend one night in Intensive Care and then will be transferred to the main floor of the hospital for 1-3 days. If everything goes as planned, we are hoping to have her back at home by Sunday evening at the latest.

After having a very busy weekend of celebrating an early Thanksgiving with the family & an early Christmas with Skye's little girl Kayleigh, my mom has strict instructions to lay low & rest up before Wednesday. She is very ready to get the surgery over with so she can start her recovery and move on with her busy life...she's really been missing her kids at the schools and being able to work out at the gym with my Dad.



My family really wants everyone to know that my Mom is going to be in the very best hands for this surgery. We feel very confident in Dr. Goldman's abilities as a surgeon and my good friend Sarita Falcon will be working as a charge nurse in the operating room that morning. My Mom will have her own personal nurse by her side 24/7 advocating for her and making sure she gets the very best medical care possible. If there was ever a question in my mind whether I picked the right career path?? I love that my nursing knowledge can help my Mom and our family during this stressful time.

Unfortunately due to the H1N1 epidemic, St. Joseph's has a very strict no visitors policy and the last thing we want is for our family members to come to the hospital and pick up a nasty bug. I will have my cell phone on me at all times (texting will probably work better than phone calls) and will try to update the blog as much as possible.

A special thank you to Grandma & Chuck, Auntie Rene & Uncle Larry, Geneva, Barb, Nancy, Mary & Jim, Auntie Anne & Uncle George & Cousin Lindsay for visiting and bringing yummy deserts and flowers. Thank you so much to Auntie Barb and Grandma and the whole family for pulling off an amazing Thanksgiving meal this Sunday. My Mom said she felt stronger after being around all the people that love her. Please keep my Mom in your thoughts and prayers this week, we love you all very much!