And so we continue. When we last left our intrepid heroine (me), she was waking up from surgery, and continuing with her alarmingly sunny attitude and quick recovery. (Foreshadowing: What could go wrong?)

Friday 10/25:  Morning Update: Good news continues to come from the doctors. Cynthia will be moved to a regular hospital room in the Neuro Ward sometime today. She gets to have "regular" food this morning for breakfast. Ultrasound tech checked her this morning for clots and she is not having any issues. Surgeon visited this morning. He is very happy with her progress. Speech is still very slow and deliberate, but her motor skills are very good. She has very good mobility on her left side where she was having tremors and lack of movement before the surgery.

She got a pretty good night’s sleep. She is off the heavy drugs - down to Hydrocodone for pain as a result of the surgery. But no headaches... and that is a great sign. There is "loose" talk that if all continues to go well, we "might" be able to go home Sunday or Monday. That is much earlier than we expected, so we're very happy with that. We're having a good morning. Hope you are too.

Saturday 10/26: Neurosurgeon just visited. He said Cynthia is in great shape under the circumstances. He says he is "blown away" by the rate of her recovery. He says that if she "has a good day tomorrow" he will send her home Sunday afternoon or early evening. That's about 4-6 days ahead of schedule!!! He says the short term memory loss is normal and that he'll monitor it closely over the coming weeks. He is going to take the staples out of her noggin next Wednesday. She will have home therapy three times a week beginning next week.

The doctor says Cynthia has been an outstanding patient and that all of the nurses in ICU have made a point of telling him how much they have enjoyed taking care of her. The nurses told him how much they will miss Cynthia and asked the doctor to keep them informed about her progress! The Doc said if all their patients were like Cynthia, their jobs would be so much easier and more productive.

The doctor did say the threat of another seizure is very real and that Cynthia will need to be watched very closely for the coming days/weeks. He is going to keep her on anti-seizure medicine. He also said "the brain can do some odd things after a trauma like Cynthia's tumor. So we'll all be watching closely for physical issues, etc.

All in all, great, great news!

Sunday 10/28 - WE GO HOME!!

This is enough to make you just impossible to live with. My plan to be ADORABLE worked! (It also helps that I am basically adorable, and good raw material is the stuff of success.)

Oddly, I have very little memory of these early days. I do remember being delighted by how easy this was. You have a tumor, it’s taken out, and everyone’s pleased, and you can go home, albeit with a walker and no hair.

One note – when we did go home I had my older son, Travis, buzz off that stupid Martin Luther fringe. Travis and his fiancée, Erin, and my younger son, Tyler, went out to get me knit caps. What a failure! They itched, compressed my head, and I looked like a crazy old lady with a walker. Not the look I was going for.

My friend Donna came to visit, and I remember walking around, carrying my walker, being very silly about how good I was feeling.  So, everyone was delighted and amazed – the doctors, my family and friends – I could focus and talk and walk. In short, I was a wonderment.

What strikes me about this is the utter hubris and ignorance I displayed. I wish I could go back to that Cynthia, and tell her to be very, very careful.

An impressive recovery will do this to you. The steps are obvious. First, brain tumors and TBIs happen to other people, poor things, and are pretty much always the result of bad behavior on their part. (Mostly driving motorcycles without a helmet. Brain tumors are only associated with George Gershwin and Bette Davis in that movie where she goes blind and is very brave.)

Second, if you do have something happen to you, treatment is obvious and relatively easy.

Third, recovery is just a matter of time. Of course you will be all right.

Wrong. Cue the music from Jaws. (Da dum…da dum…da dum…)