Surgery

This is Kyle ( I don't think I can refer to myself as the better half so.... we will go with the healthy half for now at least ). It was an early morning this morning. We got to the hospital at 6am. The hotel we are staying at is 6 miles, approximately 15 minutes to the hospital. The surgery started about 30 minutes late at around 8am. A nurse came to the waiting room to talk to me at around 10 am stating that everything went very well and that the dr would be out to speak w/ me. At 10:30 Dr Heffez came out and said that everything went very well. The shunt was put on the top of her head on the right side. We thought that is was going behind her ear. The nurse advised that they would have to shave some hair before the surgery. Cindy told them that they could shave her bald if it would get rid of her migraines (little did she know!!) Dr. Heffez said that she could get a wig or just shave the rest of her head. I told Cindy that I would shave my head also (might have to buy some more stocking caps for this winter) . They put the drainage tube to the back of her head, down the side of her neck, down her chest into her stomach. The shunt has 5 levels, 1 thru 5, 1 - letting the most fluid out and 5 - letting the least amount of fluid out. At this time she is at level 2. She was in the recovery room until noon and then brought up to her own room. She did not need to go to ICU. This afternoon they did a CT scan of her head to see how the shunt was located and sitting in her brain. She has been up out of bed twice this afternoon. She is just on liquids for the rest of the day. Dr. Heffez wants to make sure the shunt is programmed correctly before we leave. The nurse advised that on average a shunt patient will stay in the hospital for 3 days. We are trying to line up a NS Dr back in our area for checkups. We looking into 3 different offices: Sioux City, Sioux Falls and Omaha. We were advised today that the Dr's in Sioux City will not accept her as a patient. So now we are looking into Sx Falls and possilbly Omaha. Otherwise I guess we will become big Milwaukee Brewers and Milwaukee Buck fans. Cindy did tell me tonight that the ringing is no longer in her ears and that she does have head pain - but a different type of head pain (hopefully from the surgery). I do believe that many, many prayers have been answered.