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About the past week…

Posted on 10. Nov, 2009 by Wes Comer in Family, Health

Here’s a quick rundown of what happened over the past week and a half:

On Friday, October 30 I went in to my local doc to have my staples removed. When the nurse (my super-awesome Mom) took out the second staple a bit of CSF (Cerebrospinal Fluid) leaked out from the incision. This is somewhat normal (from what I understand), and after having the nurse practitioner check it out, we thought all was well. I was feeling fine at this point and as I left I was told to monitor the area for any more leaks and to let them know if I experienced an extremely painful headache. This was the first time Brooke and I had really been out since well before the surgery, so we decided we would stop by the mall for a few minutes and then get some lunch. This was around 9:30 AM.

Once in the mall, Brooke noticed that I had a little more fluid leaking out, although just a very little amount. I had already had a light headache before heading to the doctor, but it was growing a little stronger at this point. Long story short, by 11:00 AM this headache was intense. We called the doctor and we were told to try to get some caffeine in my system to see if it makes any difference. A trip to Starbucks later and I was feeling a bit better, but not great. We decided to forgo lunch and just get home so I could lie down.

By the time I got home, I was pretty much out of my head in pain. By far the worst I’ve felt during this whole ordeal, and, not to be dramatic, probably the most intense pain I’ve felt in my life. I took my heavy duty pain pill and it did nothing to help. The next couple hours are kind of a blur for me, so I can’t tell you a whole lot about what happened. I know that the doctor ordered another high power pain pill for me and it had no effect either. By 4:30 or so I was in the ER.

The on-call neurosurgeon for my group, Dr. Sanders (phenomenal!) and another doctor whose name I can’t remember checked me out and decided to do a spinal tap to collect fluid and try to determine what exactly was going on. The assumption on all parts was that I had meningitis, but they needed to know if it was chemical, viral, or bacterial. The spinal tap was a tad surreal and less than comfortable. The fact that my head felt like it was in a vice was actually a welcome distraction.

The spinal tap results proved to be inconclusive, so they started me on some intense broad-based antibiotics via IV. I stayed in the CCU/ICU the first two days, and I experienced Morphine for the first time. I absolutely hate any drug that impairs my ability to think or communicate, but eventually it gave me relief from the pain (after the first night…that first night there was nothing to be done) so I’m thankful for that.

A few days later they still weren’t getting definitive results from the spinal tap, but it was apparent that I was responding to the antibiotics so the “call” was made that it was bacterial meningitis. The way the infectious disease doctor explained what happened was interesting. He said that meningitis bacteria double every 20 minutes. So in the two hours from when I left the doctor on Friday, and when I started feeling the effects, the bacteria had already multiplied 64 fold. So you can only imagine how much it had increased from 11:00 to 4:30 when I went to the ER. And I pause here to thank my awesome, amazing, and careful wife who really pushed me into finally going to the ER. I was so out of my head that I really wasn’t thinking clearly, and stubborn about going to the hospital. Frankly, people die from bacterial meningitis all the time, and it was her caring persistence (and the hand of God) that I believe saved my life. I’m so grateful. God has been better to me than I deserve, keeping me through a dangerous surgery with very little deficit, and then bringing me through another potentially life-threatening complication. I’m amazed by His goodness.

So I was in the hospital for a week, and then sent home on IV antibiotics for another week. I’ll write about that another time (it’s VERY cool how the home IV works). Brooke was trained on how to administer the IV and take care of the saline “flushes” and the other medicines they have me on. She has to drop everything six times a day (6 AM, 7 AM, 12 PM, 6 PM, 7 PM, and midnight) to take care of me, not to mention dressing my head wound and the million other ways she’s taking care of me. (If you haven’t caught on, Brooke’s an amazing woman.) I’ve got a doctor’s appointment today to check and see how things are progressing and to find out if I have to go back in the hospital to get rid of some swelling I have on the right side of my head. (Hopefully not.) I’ll post more information as I get it, and as always I thank you for your prayers and thoughts towards me and my family.