We had a bit of bad news this evening when Alexander had what seemed to be his first post-operative seizure. His eyes diverted completely to the left and he was unresponsive for about a minute. He would later have a couple of episodes where he was looking really hard to the left but he was easily attracted to a cell phone or a toy. He’s supposed to have an EEG tomorrow to see what’s going on inside there.
Our nurse Kisha is very good and tried for a couple of hours to page the neurology resident on duty to no avail. Finally, the neurology fellow (higher ranking) got called and after a bit of diddling about came to the conclusion that no change in medications at this time. I wouldn’t want to be that resident when the fellow gets her hands upon him…she wasn’t pleased to be called late at night. Two thoughts on that one: we didn’t particularly care for the resident blowing us off (especially when one of us has an hour drive back to northern Virginia) and even if he was in a furball in the ER, protocol is that you pass the pager to someone to at least show a bit of courtesy and return the call.
That courtesy seems to be a bit hit or miss…you either get someone who is really awesome (which I’d say most of the nurses that I’ve seen have been) or you get a real…well, let’s just say the nice version is the north end of a south-bound horse. The social worker that was assigned to Alexander’s case was definitely one of the latter…pretty much useless and unhelpful added with a heaping helping of I just don’t care because my last day of work is Friday. I’ll save you from her more non-sensical observations on the responsibility of parents in the face of the appalling other than to suggest that my first instinct was to have her hauled before the relevant District tribunal governing social workers and stripped of her license to do the job. Trust me on this… it was that bad.
He had a MRI earlier today and the neurosurgical resident indicated that everything looked OK on it so we’re not really sure what the ultimate outcome of that seizure is going to be. We were told that we might expect some seizures up to 72 hours after surgery but this one was even beyond that.
Other than that, his fever has come down quite a bit and though he’s definitely weaker on the left side than he was before, he will sit up and play for about five minutes before he tires out and goes back to sleep. His appetite is for the birds (not that it was all that great before the surgery) and he’s been prone to giving it back to us on occasion so he still has an IV bag to help supplement what he should be getting.
So that’s the story for the last couple of days…hurry up and wait and more than a little frustration. Fortunately, it looks like we’ll be transferring to the Ronald McDonald House in the District tomorrow which will take a ninety minute drive in and forty-five minute drive out (on average) down to about ten minutes. When you’re stuck on Chain Bridge for about an hour and it takes two hours to get to Children’s as it did last night…yeah, not a hard call on that one. Apparently we were the beneficiary of a rare event where the Northern Virginia House was filled to overflowing and the District House had some openings. We’re thankful for any room they have for us…paying rack rates at the hotels round here (and we’re not talking about the Hay-Adams!) would break the camel’s financial back.
And just as I was getting the hang of going round Arlington Cemetery without going over the Roosevelt Memorial Bridge to Abe’s Place…