I almost forgot the NURSE

I told you that I went home to sleep because Maire seemed to be doing well, and then the nusrses called about 2:00am to tell me they couldn't wake her up. Marie seemed to be doing good according to the NURSE that she had on duty that night. I used capitol letters to identify that NURSE from all the others. I actually noticed a change in Marie before I decided to go home. The surgeon had changed the level of the spinal fluid draining from her brain. He raised the drainage bag which stopped the fluid from draining.

It affected her. It made her drowsy. One minute she was alert and recovering, the next minute she was drowsy and some what unresponsive. I brought it to the attention of the NURSE and asked her to put in a call to the surgeon, to let him know, there appeared to be a change. This is the last time that I will refer to her as the Nurse. I will now say the BEAST. The BEAST told me that they do not call the doctors, except for emergencies. This didn't seem to her to be an emergency. I asked her again, to make the call, and again, she told me no. She would follow current procedures which dictated no reason for her to BOTHER the doctor. That's right, she didn't want to BOTHER him. I should have thown her out right then and made the call myself. I didn't.

I had convinced myself that I was just worrying too much. Everything was going good. Right? I should just go get some sleep and come back in the morning. Instead I got the phone call at 2:00am that they couldn't wake Marie up.

It was sometime between 4:00am and 5:00am  that the tech's brought Marie back to the intensive care unit. The BEAST had gone home the evening before and was not one of the nurses that called at 2:00am. We waited, almost the entire day, before we new what was going on. No one at the hospital offered any information to us. They wouldn't tell us anything. We needed to wait for the surgeon. Marie remained unconscious all this time.

We actually were panicked stricken by the time the surgeon showed up, after dinner. That's correct, after dinner. They took her for and MRI st 2:00am, they called me and told me to get right there, and then there was no information for over 17 hours.

The surgeon came into the room and began to examine Maire. He flashed a light in her eyes. He tried talking to her. And then he turned his attention to the drainage bag. Here's the catch on all this. The surgeon that came in was not Marie's surgeon, it was his senior partner. He spoke out loud and asked who changed the drainage bag level. I told him it was his partner. Then we noticed Marie's right leg. The skin actually started to twitch. Her leg started muscles began flexing, quite quickly. It lasted for a few minutes. He got the nurse on duty, and gave her some orders. He changed the level of the fluid bag, back to be level with her head. The nurse injected something into Marie's IV tube. The twitching ended and he took off. He didn't come back. I wasn't sure what I just witnessed and I still had no idea what was going on.