Thank you...

I wanted to thank youall for your help.  I've never been a fan of blogs, but I can understandnow how well they fit in certain applications in life.  It's a littlebittersweet writing this last post b/c writing this blog helped me more than you'llever know.  

Thanks to our family andfriends as well, there are so many letters, emails, phone calls, food, visits it'simpossible to list them all but you know who you are and you made a differencefor us.  Thank you.

What did I learn overthe past months?

• Family is priceless, by far the most valuable asset anyone could ever have, and it shames any material asset in the universe.
• I now understand and can appreciate insurance co-pays and fee's.  A lot better than the alternative.
• You have to allow your friends to help you.  I'm not someone who likes taking or accepting help but if there was ever a time we needed it, this was it.
• Sleeping on a hospital floor or recliner is an awful idea and it's only a matter of time before the caretaker is worthless.  For me, it was 4 nights.
• Our medical field these days is absolutely amazing.  It's insane what their knowledge and capabilities are.
• Dogs are great, especially ours - Lana.  She knew what was going on.....and I'm convinced dogs have a 6th sense.  
• Life can be cruel at times.  There isn't any way around that aspect of it, however the combination of family, friends, faith and science worked for me.  
• Understanding what your up against helped tremendously, learn as much as you possibly can.
• Do not run away from your battle.  Run towards it --- It's not going anywhere.  Take a deep breath and Tighten Up.

PS ---  Dana, Iwanted to tell you, "Thank you".  Thank you for being strongerthan I could ever be.  You kept my head up when I needed it most.  Ihaven't a clue what my body was running on during the initial stagesof all this...probably a mix between adrenaline, inspiration and love. 

Regardless, you areincredible.

The Final Update

If you don't feel like reading this long blog post, this will sum it up = Dana is cured.

If you'd like know a little more information about all this then here you go!

Yesterday we had an MRI to get an update on how everything is coming along (I think we've become experts at the filling out paperwork, waiting, and waiting some more thing).

Once we had our MRI scans in hand we visited with Dr Deshmukh and his PA Dr Stamper and got some very good news.

The brain has continued to heal nicely.  Some of the entry way they removed to get to the cavernoma has already healed up and the best news was there was still no sign of any residual cavernoma.  Deshmukh was particularly happy about the amount of old stained brain matter they removed from the area.  He estimated that around 95% of the stained brain had been cleaned thus increasing our chancing for no seizures down the road.  He could see a that the right side of her head was still slightly swollen however that will come down eventually as well.

After getting the good news we started asking away if she could do this, or that.  There was a long list and they were very patient with us (as always) and went over how much of this we could do and/or why we couldn't do any of that.

We have 6 more long weeks until she can do impact exercises like jogging but in the meantime she is allowed to exercise on the elliptical, stationary bike, swimming, etc.  

The overall main threat to Dana now is general fatigue or getting over heated.  If she gets too fatigued and over does something then it's possible her body could shut down (sort of like fainting), thus requiring her a day or two of rest to get her energy back.  Her eyes will have bags under them and she'd really just feel exhausted.  Deshmukh told us that younger people actually have a longer recovery time than older folks b/c younger folks usually over do things and then have set backs.  Luckily for us that hasn't happened!

The overall main threat to Dana in the long run is seizures.  Due to the fact that we operated on a part of the brain that is mainly associated with seizures there will always be a risk for seizures.  However, because they removed a lot of the brain that was stained with blood (and thus having iron deposits in it) her risk of having a seizure is just as much as me having a seizure.  

I love those odds.

In 6 weeks we have another follow up to check on how she is going and to remove all restrictions from her.  That will be a terrific day sometime in mid-May and we can't wait.

After we left the Dr's office we had lunch at our favorite restaurant in Davidson, Flat Iron.  For Dana she took advantage of one of the lifted restrictions right away by ordering a beer!

New Restrictions

Yesterday was 4 weeks after her 2nd surgery and she definitely made sure I remembered that as well as our Dr's.  After not hearing from them by noon I had to call our Dr up, pleading for him to give me a call back so I could get her off my back!

A few hours later he gave us a call and we answered a lot of questions regarding her progress, any set-backs as well as what she's been doing day to day for the past week.

Based off the info we supplied him here is the plan for the next week until we visit him this Thursday =

• She can watch TV, use her smartphone and be on the computer for 30 minutes at a time.  She will become tired after using these but as long as she listens to her body and rest she'll be fine.
• Obviously with the incorporation of watching video screens that will test her brain on whether or not it is good to go for not having seizures.  She has never had a seizure and the med's we just precautionary but the temporal lobe area is a hot spot for seizure activity.  After having surgery on it there is always a risk for inducing them. We will complete the use of the anti-seizure medicine this Monday so that will give us a few days of no med's + computer screens prior to the Dr visit on Thursday.
• Slowly but surely she can incorporate more day to day activities and be more active over the next week (small chores, etc).
• No driving until after next weeks check up.
• Prior to the Thursday check up we will get a MRI with dye to see how everything has healed over the past month.  This will give us and our Dr the peace of mind that we are all needing for him to say that she is close to being cured.
• Due to her age, her good health and how she has taken time to not overdue anything these past few weeks he feels she may be excelling at this healing process.  He is hopefully that we will be able to give her the label of "cured" at 6 weeks instead of the 8-12 week mark.  
• Exercise still isn't on the table though until two more weeks.

All this being said, we are on track for great things!!!  I'll keep you posted on how this next week goes and who knows maybe Dana will jump on here to say a few things since she can do that these days.  After next weeks visit on Thursday I think we will be able to safely shut the blog down and move on to normalcy.