Wednesday Report

Not much new news today but a few things worth mentioning.

A CT Scan yesterday revealed that one of Karyn's ventricles is
collapsed, something that has been suspected for some time now. This
will be dealt with when the shunt(s) go in.

Dr. Hoffman came by today from the Plastic Surgery team and evaluated
Karyn's wound. There is a very slight amount of seepage so Dr. Parsa
enlisted Dr. Hoffman to see if there's anything they can do to aid
the wound in healing. The three options are re-closing with more
stitches, light surgery to create a little more "slack" in the skin
so it is not so stretched and finally (and least-likely right now)
microsurgery to close the wound using grafts. Since the wound is
looking better this week (over last week when he first visited), we
may just opt for the more efficient closing of the area in question.

Still no cultures in the latest round of samples, so it appears that
the infection is no longer an issue. The one positive yeast reading
is looking more and more like it was a contaminated sample since
there were clean results both before and after the Positive sample.

The blood clot in Karyn's right leg appears to be clearing as the
swelling is now going down. My guess is that by the week's end her
leg should be back to normal, let's hope that my guess is right.

The big issue for me right now is the her mental status. She is
definitely aware of us being there, she recognizes me and all the
people that visit, she knows where she is and, with some coaxing, she
will speak. I get the feeling that she is completely present but
there is a layer between her and the outside world that is preventing
normal communication. The doctors are not entirely sure what is
causing this nor will they guess how long they think it will last.
Some of the theories include effects from the antibiotics, the dead
infection in the brain and fatigue. Hopefully I will get more
information on this soon. While it is nice to be able to spend time
with her each afternoon, I really miss being able to talk to her
about things going on outside the hospital, hopefully that will
resume again soon......

Also, thank you for all the emails and phone calls. I appreciate all
of your votes of confidence and it really helps to know that everyone
is out there even though it seems like we never see each other any
more. I know that will change soon....

~Julian