Monday, April 27, 2020

"Drop what you are doing and come to the ER"

Those were (essentially) the unexpected words I got on the phone this past Tuesday.

Tuesday morning I had an MRI and a visit to get my spot on my head checked out.  They originally told me after surgery that I would have a bruise in that spot for a couple of weeks, and so I sat around and waited for it to get better, but it just wasn't getting over the hump. 

So this past Sunday I sent a picture of it to my neurosurgeon and he got back in touch with me and schedule an MRI for Tuesday.

So when they had a chance to look at the MRI, they saw an infection beneath the skull.


The only way to clean it out is to go back in, take off the part of the skull from surgery, rinse it out, check to see how deep the infection goes, and then NOT put the skull back on but leave it off, treat the body with a month or more of antibiotics, wear a helmet, and then at some point a few months down the road, have another surgery to put in a titanium plate where the skull was.


So that all happened this week and I was released yesterday from the hospital.  I'm looking at antibiotics via IV everyday for the next month, radiation can resume in about two weeks, and then I'll have a surgery to go back in and replace the skull section with titanium in about 7 weeks. 

So this bump in the road set me back about a month total, but I'm totally fine with it, and trust in God's Divine Providence.


Here's a photo of me from Sunday, the day I was released:



Thursday, April 9, 2020

Homily for Holy Thursday

The 3 things the Church asks us to preach about tonight are the 3 surest paths forward through this time of pandemic, and they are united under the one phrase "This is my body, given up for you!"