Monday Night

Steph had a pretty rough night. She was up every half hour to hour feeling sick or throwing up. She is still really sleepy from the anti nausea medicine so she would usually fall back to sleep pretty quickly afterwards. She is having some discomfort in her back and neck from the way she has to lay. She can't really find a comfortable spot but she is pretty limited on how she can lay with a big ball of gauze behind her right ear. We tried to lay her on her side last night with the help of some pillows propped in key spots and that had limited success. I tried to rub the spots on her back where she complained hurt the most but that just gave her a headache. She kindof made her way back to laying on her back after a few hours.
Early in the morning she was running a fever of about 101, if I did the math right. The temp is in Celsius. The nurse said that was normal. Instead of getting chills she complained about being too hot. They brought her in a big fan and that seemed to help. Her temp is more normal now.
Dr. Reichman came in this morning to check on her and said he wanted to move her up to a regular room and get her walking. He said that would be the only way to really fix the nausea. Dr. Shelton's Resident, Dr. Mann came in and changed her dressing on her head and on her stomach (from the fat graft.) When he changed the head dressing I got a good look at her incision. Her hair is shaved a couple inches back from her ear with the cut running behind the ear about an inch. It starts about parallel to the bottom of her ear and runs to above her ear following the contour of the ear. Dr Mann said that the anti nausea medicine doesn't help a whole lot because her nausea is caused by vertigo. We were hoping that because her tumor was so big it would have already caused some damage to the balance nerves on the right side and the left would have started compensating. If that was the case the vertigo wouldn't be so bad after surgery. It looks like that isn't really the case so getting her up and walking is the only option. She wasn't happy about that. She did get a couple sips of apple juice to stay down so that is good news. They are about to give her another shot of morphine so hopefully she doesn't sent the apple juice back up after. The nurse said the shot lasts longer and doesn't usually make people as sick as the iv morphine. Steph chose to do the shot and she hates needles so I know she is feeling pretty sick still. When they give her the shot, in the arm or butt, she doesn't make a sound but she squeezes my hand pretty hard.
Hopefully all goes well today and she sleeps better tomorrow.

Steph said it was ok to post some pictures in case someone found her blog that was going through the same thing. It really helped to to read other peoples stories like the Morgans. So here are some pics. The first one is from monday night about 8:30 PM and the second is this morning, Tues, at 9:30 AM