Sunday April 9, 2006

Today was a much brighter day!

Mike was alert and even feeding himself lunch today. He answered almost every question correctly - except for our exact street address number and who ran against Bush in 04 (but let's face it, how memorable was John Kerry... really).

He made several jokes and seemed surprised to learn that he had an additional surgery friday morning. He didn't realize why we were instructing him to stop touching his bandage on his head. "You have no actual skull bone under there, Mike. One big soft spot... like a baby. That's it." He raised his eyebrows. "Ahh... I see." It's still tiring for him to have his eye open for long periods of time. his right eye is still mostly swollen shut.

As the day went on he did get increasingly fatigued. He didn't seem to recall things that had happened earlier in the day, like who had been in to visit or what he had for lunch. But that could simply be the brain shutting itself off to heal some more - or at least that's how I'm going to think about it.

The plan right now is for another surgery Tues or Thurs to replace the bone plate and to change the external shunt he currently has into an internal programmable shunt. We'll see how he does tomorrow.

One day at a time. Never has this stupid expression meant so much. One freaking day at a time.

Thank you for your amazing support through this total saga. The love from friends, colleagues, family, extended family, long lost friends, congregations of our loved ones, and friends of friends of friends... is simply overwhelming.

PS: For those of you wondering what exactly this tumor looks like and where it is, this photo is an MRI of someone with a tumor almost identical to (though perhaps slightly larger than) Mike's. The big mass in the center is the tumor.

love, danna