WE LOVE YOU PAMMIE SUE!

Hi everybody,



The good news is that mom responded well to Dr. Efron this morning. He asked her to squeeze his hand and she did a couple of times. He even asked her to show her two fingers (like a peace sign) and she did that as well. He was VERY encouraged by this one. She also squeezed Jocelyn's hand when she asked her to do so. Which of course was very exciting for her as she has been asking mom to do this from post op. day one! He too was very concerned she wasn't doing any of this yesterday and was extremely happy to finally see some activity today.

Okay...so here are the three main concerns.

1 - The Hypothalamus. The hypothalamus controls body temperature, hunger, thirst, sleep patterns, and other things. He is worried that some, if not all of these things were affected during the surgery. The hypothalamus communicates with the pituitary gland, and as I mentioned before, one of things the pituitary gland controls is bladder function which brings me to the second main concern.

2 - Pituitary Gland - This is basically the bladder control issue that I mentioned.

3 - Optic Nerve - Both of mom's optic nerves were manipulated and thus her sight is a concern. There is also a concern about mom's eye lids. The cranial nerve that controls the opening and closing of the eye (cranial nerve #3) for both eyes were touching the tumor.

Something else that Dr. Efron is concerned about but isn't part of his top 3 concerns are the fact that mom doesn't have very strong movement in the left side of her body. He's not too concerned about this because mom will be able to get her strength back with therapy and time.

There was also a loss of blood flow to mom's brain which was due to the manipulation of the tiny blood vessels that were involved in the surgery. This basically means that our Pammie suffered a stroke. The effects that this will have her long term are unkown. In fact, the long term effects of all of this are unkown. It's the unkown that is driving us nuts. We just want mom to perk up and be the Pammie we all know and love. Jocelyn has been awesome with mom. She knows that mom is a big believer in the "healing touch" and continues to tickle her arms, massage her feet and hold her hands.

Today our goal is to continue talking to her, telling her we love her and reminding her where she is and what has gone on. But it's day by day friends. Any ideas of her getting out of her anytime soon are just not realistic. So let's take it one step at a time. The first step is for mom to wake up and to get that breathing tube out.

Keep the prayers comin'.

Love

Us