Off To The Hospital

What a change in plans I had this weekend! I was getting ready to leave the house Saturday morning and was looking forward to "my last hurrah" with a friend who is moving out of town, when I got the phone call saying that my sister was leaking spinal fluid and was rushing to Ft. Wayne's Lutheran Hospital.

For those of you who don't remember...my sister, Gail, had a brain tumor removed on February 23rd.  I know the day well because it was Tyler's 1st birthday. The tumor was benign, but was the size of her fist and needed to be taken out. She recovered remarkably...or so we thought.

Gail with her sons and granddaughter one week before her surgery at our sister's wedding

Gail had emergency surgery on Sunday. When she reached the hospital, her temperature was 102 and her blood pressure was 190/117. Turns out she has an aggressive strep infection. What we thought was spinal fluid leaking from her incision and ear turned out to be the infection. They had to reopen her skull and go in to suction out what they could and replaced the metal plate that was inserted in the first surgery with bone from her hip.

She has been in horrific pain and is on a morphine drip along with strong doses of antibiotics. The doc said yesterday that she will likely be on antibiotics for 4-6 weeks! Her temp has gone down, however, and she is slowly improving. I'm hoping to find her in her own room today and out of ICU.