Saturday, November 1st

Cindy & Brad at Lake Quinault Lodge in Olympic National Park

Hello everyone,

Yesterday, in my haste to get a blog set up, quickly trying to find a good picture of Cindy, I cropped down this picture.  In doing so, I did a great disservice to our good friend Brad Toebben (on the left). You see, when Cindy's aneurism burst, she was in Brad's car on the way home from their usual Saturday morning trip to the farmer's market at Portland State University.  His quick action in getting help immediately, which got her to the hospital in less than thirty minutes, saved her life...plain and simple.  For that, I will be forever grateful to him.  That said, and that debt acknowledged, I'm happy to report that she continues to do very well.  They did a Trans-Cranial Doppler yesterday...a form of ultrasound by which they monitor whether or not she's experiencing vasospasms (the constriction of the vessels of the brain due to irritation from all the blood).  She appears to be at the borderline so they're ratcheting up her blood pressure to keep the vessels open and are giving her medications to prevent the constriction.  They'll continue to do these TCDs every other day to monitor the status of the spasms.  Beginning yesterday she's had very bad headaches, which, apparently, is the norm...in fact, they're surprised she hasn't had them from the very beginning.  They're very good about giving her all the pain medication she needs to fend them off, though, so that's good.  Other than that, she continues to do exceptionally well (feeding herself and eating like a horse) and bits of her memory seem to be coming back little by little.  She's still restrained to keep her from disturbing the drain in her head and the catheter in her neck which she finds very irritating and she gets very angry when we have to hold the restraint as she eats (they untie her right hand for that).  We've found that if we tell her that we're only doing it because we've been told we have to, she doesn't get quite so mad.  All your thoughts and prayers are being answered, so keep them up so we can get her through the next two weeks of danger without further injury.