Alan's surgery results

Alan's surgery yesterday went off well.  What they found is that he had scar tissue surrounding and connecting to the 9th cranial nerve and an artery, which was causing the long lasting head pain.  The surgeon thought that the scar tissue was probably from an old head trauma.  He was able to separate the scar tissue from the artery and nerve and  put in two small Teflon plates to bridge the area around the artery and keep it separated from the nerve.  

It was major surgery, as you can imagine, so he is now in ICU taking very heavy meds for pain. The surgeon came by yesterday evening about 8:30 to check on him and to talk to me at greater length than we had right after the surgery.  He said that the recovery will take a while, but he didn't see anything that was a problem at this point.

The nurses in ICU have been fantastic, in and out constantly monitoring the many tubes and devices connected to  him.  They are carefully checking him hourly, looking into his eyes and asking him to do the stroke test:  smile, wiggle toes, stick out tongue and move from side to side, grip hands. They are carefully monitoring his blood pressure; he is taking BP meds IV. He is able to have pain meds on demand at this point, so basically, he is sleeping a lot, which is good.  I spent the night with him last night because he isn't able to function well enough to use a nurse call button at this point.  His sister Susie is with him this afternoon, so I can come home, let you know what is going on, and get some rest.  I'll probably be there again tonight, since he will still be in ICU.

I don't know how long he will be in the hospital--several more days for sure.  I'll put another post when there is new information.