Bunn’s Prairie

My brother-in-law and I brought Kaley to her 1st Twins game since her brain injury. Kaley did very well. We enjoyed sharing some cheese curds (the good kind not the cheap icky kind) before the game and watched the game from the first inning through about the middle of the fifth inning. It was a pretty crappy game, so that didn’t help. It also didn’t help that Kaley started the evening pretty tired (as they are working Kaley very hard with therapies these days. She was pretty relaxed when I arrived and we transfered to and from the car. Kaley didn’t do so well with those. However after spending the evening at the dome, she did much better on the transfers on the way back to the nursing home. Kaley was looking forward to watching her favorite player Kirby Puckett. My brother-in-law played along (claiming how he would be very excited to see Puckett as well (Puckett passed away last year)). I didn’t play along and told Kaley the truth. All and all she did very well.

Yesterday’s surgery was a success.  The surgeon said Kaley can probably see better today than she could on Tuesday.  Kaley agrees, but as it’s hard to quantify the improvement.  She was able to identify several things several feet away.  Her vision should continue to improve as the swelling continues to go down in her eye. 

Today’s procedure was a success.  The surgeon said everything went perfect.  He had an early meeting with the anesthesiologist yesterday to form a game plan and everyone was on the same page: conscious sedation and local anesthetic.  Luckily I was in the pre-op room as they were going to start an IV, not realizing that Kaley had a port-a-cath and I overheard the anesthesiologist discussing the plan and I chimed in with some feedback of prior surgeries and he changed his plan after getting more information.  They were able to do the entire procedure without using narcotics which is what everyone has attributed Kaley’s aspiration from last year and prior code blues.

Kaley has a patch on her “good” eye tonight (so she can only see out of her bad eye, which isn’t good).  Anyways after they remove the patch tomorrow, the anticipate Kaley having signifigantly improved vision out of her good eye.  Here’s hoping.

More on Kaley’s mental progress in the next day or two.  I’ve got a good story, but it deserves it’s own post.

The day has finally come.  Hopefully, in the next couple of days Kaley will be able to see as well (or better!) than she has since last summer.  She will still have issues in her bad eye, but her good eye will hopefully be back to being her good eye again.

I will post more when I have more information.

I got a call from the “clotters” at the U. They did some tests on Kaley’s blood thinner usage while she was in patient earlier this week. It turns out that Kaley “lupus inhibitor” factor which was a significant contributor to Kaley’s blood clots back in 2005 came back negative.  This means that if Kaley were up and around she would not have to take blood thinners anymore.  Unfortunately with Kaley’s decreased movement (due to the anoxic brain injury) they thought it was best to keep her on the low dose she is on now.  That being said, as she continues to recover (hopefully) and her activity level returns to closer to normal she can discontinue using blood thinners all together!