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Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2006 - 5:38 a.m. Grandmother Has Had a Setback
Tarik's
grandmother is still in hospital, where she has been since Christmas Eve after
falling backwards down the stairs, hitting her head on the kitchen floor,
gashing it open and suffering a major concussion and sub-cranial bleeding.
Since then she has resided in the Neuro-ICU wing of Memorial Hermann Hospital at
the Texas Medical Center, and then a regular room in the neuro wing of
same. Her head injury has been healing slowly but surely, and she has been
doing better than her doctors expected, especially for someone her age.
She has had excruciating head aches this whole time, which is to be
expected. However, the last week or so she has stopped eating solid foods
and will really only drink the Ensure that is given her. She has also been
having attacks of dizziness and is unsteady when she walks, most likely due to
an inner ear issue. We were hoping she would be able to leave this week,
and come home to us. Her Christmas presents are all still sitting under
the tree at my mother in law's house, which has not been taken down until she
gets out of the hospital. However, yesterday after they removed her
stitches, they did a CT scan which showed that the blood that has pooled under
her skull at the base of her brain, which had started to coagulate and then dissipate,
has started to re-liquefy, which is causing pressure on her brain and
pain. I believe tomorrow that they are going to perform a trepanation to
relieve the pressure. Trepanation is the cutting of a hole in the skull to
relieve pressure on the brain due to a head injury. It is my understanding
that she will not be under anesthesia when they perform this procedure because
of the dangers of that drug. As I mentioned in a previous entry, her survival
chances due to her injury, its complications and its side effects are only about
10-20 percent. This procedure may or may not be helpful, but it is
something that they have been putting off since she came in because of the
dangers it poses. And if she continues to refuse food, they may be forced
to tube feed her which, for her, would be something most undignified. They
even went so far as to ask the family if she should not be tube fed and allowed
to go the natural course and let go, ie: allowed to die. Song
Virus du Jour: "Daybreak" ~ Barry Manilow Useless
Trivia du Jour: Trepanation
(also known as trepanning, trephination, trephining or burr
hole) is a form of surgery
in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the skull,
thus exposing the dura mater. It addresses health problems that relate to
intracranial diseases, e.g. for evacuation of intracranial epidural
and subdural
hematomas. Trepanation
has been carried out for both medical reasons and mystical
practices for a long time: Evidence of trepanation has been found in
pre-historic human remains from Neolithic
times onwards, per cave paintings indicating that people believed the practice
would cure epileptic seizures and mental disorders. Furthermore, Hippocrates
gave specific directions on the procedure from its evolution through the Greek
age. |
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- - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008
More updates on another blog home. - Wednesday, Feb. 06, 2008 Where are my zzzzzz's? - Thursday, Nov. 08, 2007 Halloween '07 - Friday, Nov. 02, 2007 Hallween is All Good! - Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007 |
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