WE LOVE YOU PAMMIE SUE!

Well, it's that Blog time again. It is no secret that Pammie is one loved lady and as such, our phones have been blowing up with requests for updates. We are overwhelmed by everyone's love and concern and certainly appreciate all the well wishes and prayers. In an effort to keep everyone informed as quickly as possible, I have put together this blog. My goal is to update this blog a few times a day until mom is in the clear.

For those of you just checking in, let me bring you up to speed. Mom went to get some eye glasses at Lens Crafters around Thanksgiving time. She failed the peripheral vision test and was told that she may have a tumor, which proved to be correct. Mom had a Meningioma Tumor. It was benign but it was in a very dangerous spot. It was quite large and was pushing on her pituitary gland, her optic nerves, her internal carotid artery, many small blood vessels and other things that I can't quite remember right now. The docs estimated that she had been living with the tumor for about 10 years and are very surprised that she hasn't had a more severe side effect from the tumor. If she were to do nothing, the docs said she would, at some point, lose her eye sight, have possible paralysis of some kind, loss of bladder control and many many other things. They emphasised to mom that these things were basically a guarantee to happen if she did nothing. So the answer would seem to be, "no problem then. Let's take it out and all is good." Not so fast. The catch 22 is that everything I just mentioned is still very possible as a RESULT of the surgery. And that is why mom was so nervous and I can't blame her. Physically, she felt fine. It's not like she already had some loss of vision or a minor stroke or anything like that. She was feeling fine and had to go into this surgery knowing that there was a very good chance she would have some minor to major physical setbacks afterward.

And that is where we are now. Yesterday the Pammer underwent a 12 hour surgery to remove the tumor. Dr. Efron said it was one of his top 5 most difficult surgeries. The good news was that he got a lot more than he had expected but there was a lot of manipulation and trauma as a result of the surgery. As of right now, which is 2:45PM on Tuesday, mom is still on the ventilator. She is doing most of the work though as far as taking her breaths, which is good. The goal is to take the ventilator out but mom needs to cooperate for that to happen. There is a basic list of commands and reflexes she needs to respond to. She needs to lift up her head a little bit when asked, she needs to make a fist when we put our finger in her palm and she needs to be able to move her fingers and toes when asked. There are a few others they want her to do that I can't remember right now. According to Hank (mom's nurse today who is awesome), mom will have the ventilator tube in until tomorrow. He said he tried these commands with mom this morning but she wasn't quite as responsive as he would like to see. He quickly said though that he wasn't surprised that she wasn't very responsive yet, given the intensity of the surgery. A 12 hour surgery is not something you bounce back from and it's going to take good ole Pammie Sue some time.

They took her off the sedation medication about an hour ago so she should be waking up soon.

Thank you all for checking in. The updates on this blog will most likely come from myself, Jocelyn, and Marah.


Please say your prayers that when mom wakes up, she can see, she can move her arms and legs and that she is not in too much pain.

Love,

Ryan