A pessimistic neurologist

Tonight on RantWoman's way home, she stopped by the hospital to look in on Jana. Rosa and Warren were the only ones there but Rosa said there had already been more than 20 people stopping by today.

Jana can clearly greet everyone who comes in. Rose is fixing her up a playlist for her iPod and Jana was clearly able to respond to queries about music choices. Jana's voice is a little rough and speaking does not seem entirely easy for her, but she does it! There was one moment during queries about whether anything else from home is needed when Jana mentioned something about Microsoft. No one in the room has any idea what she meant though it is funny to think of possibilities.

One highlight of the day was a pharmacist from Harborview. Rosa noted that he and Jana were chattering away about some medical thing that neither Rosa nor Warren knew anything about.

Since Jana no longer has a probe in her head, today she was fair game for an MRI of her head. Rosa reported that one of Jana's nurse friends says the neurologist who read the exam results tends toward the pessimistic end of assessments. He said that Jana has only a few places in her brain that seem to have problems and likely within 3 to 6 months her brain will learn to work around them. That's the pessimistic view! Well, RantWoman who knows by comparison nearly nothing about the healing of brains would still caution that exactly what turns out to be critical for different functions, sometimes subtle, can be hard to pinpoint. But for now it is so good to note all these huge strides of progress.

Jana also got carted off for surgery on her left leg Wednesday evening. RantWoman had the impression this happened in the matter-of-fact way of freight, scheduled when convenient, no fuss, no muss, no getting to the hospital at 6 am for an 8 am surgery time, just in the evening when it fit into the schedule. RantWoman supposes that is one advantage also of still being on IV nutrition. Rosa reports that the surgery successfully aligned the fibula and the doctor does not anticipate need for any more surgery on her leg.

Both Jana's arms seem basically to have escaped injury.

Jana was licking her lips a lot; there was lip balm somewhere but those there also figured the nurse can handle regular applications.

Rosa said it does not appear that Jana is on any paid medication but Jana reported feeling good, 10 on a scale to 10. We had a discussion of an ortho doctor RantWoman once heard talking about people just being wired to handle pain differently. At the time RantWoman did not think to ask whether there is any chance that Jana is still not feeling a lot because of yesterday's anesthesia; this is something RantWoman remembers from when RantMom had knee replacement surgery. Because of the spinal block RantMom really felt no pain for about a day after surgery and then she wanted a little more medication.

To say the least, everyone is glad Jana is in much better shape than she was at the same time last week.

Mention was made again of some kind of email communications. RantWoman made another attempt to find it but at this point she is hoping the weekly bulletin will have more info.