At home

Once back at home, I went straight to bed. I wasn't allowed to shower until the next day, so my hair was caked with blood and betadine, but I didn't care. The house was quiet. No more buzzing, beeping, or nasty smells of the ICU. I sank down into my own mattress and slept.

The next morning, the first thing I did was shower! I felt like a new person, despite the pain medication I was on that kept me feeling a bit loopy, and the corticosteroids that kept my brain from swelling, but also made me hungry all the time. 

Over the next few days, I noticed some changes. The biggest one being that I no longer had a throbbing headache all the time from the CSF buildup. I also noticed some clicking noises in my head, which I had been prepared for by reading another craniotomy blog. Things were settling in deep inside my brain. Glad I knew about that beforehand.

It's been ten days since my surgery and I had my post-op appointment with the surgeon today. He took out the staples and I feel a whole lot lighter. We discussed the future plan of action, basically a wait and see treatment plan. The tumor is benign and slow growing. The biopsy came back as a Subependymal Giant Cell Astrocytoma (SEGA). It is usually only found in people with a certain genetic mutation called Tuberous Sclerosis Complex. I will have to be genetically tested for this, because the syndrome comes with a whole host of other benign, but sometimes problematic tumor growths throughout several systems of the body. My whole family has to be tested as well, so we can discover if my mutation was spontaneous or passed on genetically.

Right now, I'm mostly trying to concentrate on recovering from this surgery, and worry about the rest later.