Pulling and Praying

I had two appointments today. My neurosurgeon, Dr. Basta and my Infectious Disease Doctor, Dr. Brune. Two very gifted and healing doctors, who I am grateful to have. However, 2 VERY different personalties. As Dr. Basta himself said today "neurosurgeons have big egos." And I understand that when a doctor goes through 7 years of medical school and routinely sees the inside of patients' brains and spines he/she has to be confident, and in fact that confidence makes him/her a better surgeon. Actually, when my neurologist referred me to the neurosurgery group last November she warned me that neurosurgeons "are a special breed socially." She also defended them by saying "and that is how they have to be in order to be good surgeons." Dr. Basta embodies his own words, but today he must have been bored due to snowed out appointments. I knew he had let his guard down when he entered the room individually without his lovely ladies. Like I mentioned, he always with a group of nurses. Secondly, he simply sat down to chit chat like three girlfriends at a slumber party. I felt like he was going to prepare a Peppermint Soy Mocha for us. Our conversation weaved through his recent preschool drama, how cell phone customers get random texts, and preferences between the Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna mini vans. A helmet joke was even thrown out there in honor of my poorly placed scratch. We came up with a plan for what happens after the infection clears and he looked at me with all sincerity and said he truly feels bad for me. Wow...his ego bubble just exploded into a million little pieces. He is not just a surgical machine held up on a holy pedestal. He has true sympathy for his patients, and that is helpful to know because it makes him much more approachable.

Once the conversation was flowing, I asked about the extraction of the shunt. "How did you get this 4 foot long device out of me head?" He replied with "I pulled and prayed." He continued saying he was getting antsy waiting for the CSF lab results in the OR, so he asked himself how easy would it be to get the valve out? So he wedged something under a something and easily loosened something. All this sounded very nontechnical, however, my restored faith made me grateful that he was the one "pulling and praying" and not another surgeon. BTW, he also said that my CSF was filthy with infection. The word "filthy" made me a bit sick to my stomach.

Then we went down a floor to see the Infectious Disease doctor. He has always been very approachable. He was reassuring that I would only have to be on antibiotics until Monday night. Unfortunately that is Christmas Eve, so I will not be able to get my highly uncomfortable PICC line out until Wednesday. While we are on the the topic of antibiotics, I want to say how thankful I am for Kyle...my attorney turned nurse. Every morning Kyle rubs his hands with Pruelle hand sanitizer and follows the same routine. Scrub the hub (we both giggled at this double entendre title), flush, push antibiotic, flush, IV antibiotic, flush, Heperin flush, and scrub the hub. Then in the evening he does the same: Pruelle, scrub the hub, flush, push antibiotic, flush, IV antibiotic, flush, Heperin flush, and scrub the hub; resulting in me being hooked up to an IV bag three hours a day. It was determined that the bacteria was simply staphylococcus aureus. Luckily it wasn't methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) that is the impetus of all the flesh eating bacteria horror stories. Since it takes 3 days of culture growth to determine if it is methicillin-resistant, they just treated the infection with an antibiotic called Vancomycin because it treats both types of staph. Then since my infection was in the CSF they had to add on another antibiotic to assure the treatment reached the CSF, which is a difficult location to access. Furthermore, IV is the most efficient delivery system for the drugs to reach my CSF. This whole science lesson is suppose to explain why I can't just pop a pill like I do when I have a sinus infection. Though I can pop that pill by myself, I can't do the whole "scrub the hub, flush, push antibiotic, flush, IV antibiotic, flush, Heperin flush, and scrub the hub" routine on my own arm, so Kyle volunteered for the job. Kyle was such a quick learner. He was praised by the home health nurse on his ability after only the 1st day! I was proud of him when she complimented him because he deserves the attention! During the past 10 days he has managed to be a good dad, husband, employee, and now nurse. Thank you Babe!!