Day 3 - Post Bypass Surgery

Me again!

Today was one of the more emotionally difficult days. Jimmy was very lethargic and unresponsive, which set off a whole bunch of warning bells for me. This top picture was taken at one of his few wakeful moments during the day. As you can see, he does not have a feeding tube coming out of his nose; that is because he decided to remove it earlier this morning! As you can see from the picture below, he did get it re-installed later in the day. He did manage to get his sticky little fingers around that one also, but I was able to pry them loose before he could pull it out again. Needless to say, Jimmy's "reminders" have been reapplied and securely tightened down. They are actually kind of handy, and I may just decide to bring them home with me if he doesn't start behaving.



Because he was so out of it, they hooked him back up to the EEG monitor (picture below) to see if he was having anymore seizure activity. It did not appear that he was. After that test was completed, the nurse and I tried to wake him up for his routine testing where he is asked to wiggle his toes, move his arms and legs, hold up two fingers, stick out his tongue, smile, and follow the nurses finger with his eyes. Then he is asked questions like, "what day is it", "where are you", "why are you here", etc. Although we did get him to follow the commands, albeit weakly, he was having difficulty with some of the questions. We got really nervous when he was having trouble deciding who I was. He did know my name, but at first he thought I was his doctor, and when I gave him a choice of whether I was his girlfriend, wife, daughter, or mother, he decided I was his girlfriend. I'm not going to let him get away with that just because he's not wearing his wedding ring right now! After that scare, I talked the nurse into ordering a CT scan. The scan did come back showing some changes in the distribution of the brain fluids, so they adjusted his drain and gave him some medication to help with that. They plan to do another CT scan in the morning, and if he's still so lethargic, they will follow it up with an MRI to see if the aneurysm is doing anything new. They are also checking his blood work to make sure that his kidney and liver counts are okay because that can sometimes make people confused.

Fortunately, the doctors don't seem to be panicking (and I'm trying not to). They think that Jimmy's lack of wakefulness and confusion are due to his post-surgery exhaustion. He's been through so much that they feel that he just needs a few days of restfulness to get his strength back. I guess I can buy that, but it's still a little bit scary to have your husband that confused! He did make up for it a little when asked the same questions and he responded that I was his 'hot wife'. I'll be really happy tomorrow if he can get all the questions correct!

I apologize for not being responsive to your emails and texts today. My darling Michael accidently took my phone charger home with him, so my blackberry died. He is overnighting it to me, so I hope to be reconnected to my lifeline by tomorrow afternoon. I will try to catch up then and maybe have some better news.

Understandably, it was a very emotionally draining day for me. Please send your prayers for renewed strength for both Jimmy and myself. The balloon angio/coil will probably be done more toward the end of the week, depending on how Jim is doing. They need him to be very responsive for that test/procedure. That will be another very big day as we need the balloon angio results to be totally perfect this time. I shudder to think of what other options they will have to come up with if the bypass isn't working well enough for them to be able to coil off the aneurysm. Please, please, please pray for positive results. Don't worry, my faith is still strong; I'm just feeling really wiped out at the moment. I'm definitely going to get to bed early tonight so that I can be strong for Jimmy tomorrow.

Love you all ...
Krissy