I remember a few things from the first couple days in the ward. The faucet was dripping in one of the rooms, and I woke up just long enough to tell them to tie a face cloth from it to the bottom of the sink. They did and it stopped, and I was immediately back to sleep. Another thing I remember was the menu. They gave us the meal menu every morning, and we always optimistically filled the whole thing out, even though we knew I wouldn't be able to hold anything down except water. Someone had given me a fruit basket as a get well present (which was really nice), but my sense of smell was ridiculously heightened, and I couldn't take the smell of the banana. I had to get my parents to take it out of the room.
As the days went by, I got progressively better. I still threw up everything, and every time I did my headache would get so bad that my skin would go bright white, then bright red, and I'd have to tense all my muscles because it was the only thing I could do against the pain. I could hold water down pretty well usually, except for one night where they gave me too much codeine and the water came back up, still cold. One night I had watermelon and it stayed down, so I got super excited about it and had a ton, and then threw it all back up again. I couldn't eat watermelon for years after, and I still get a little cautious when I see it.
My mom slept in a chair beside my bed every night except for one. That night my dad stayed, and got so angry at the nurse (actually, this was the night of the codeine incident), set her straight, and then sat down and watched over me like an angry wolf watching over its cub. It was pretty funny. My entire family was there a lot, even Kyle, who was in grade 12 at the time. I had a couple of people visit me, including my family doctor and my grandparents. My friends, however, didn't come once, and didn't even try to contact me until I was well enough to check my phone and text them to tell them I was alive. Even then, they decided that was good enough and they didn't need to visit me.
One of the highlights of my stay in the hospital that time was when a volunteer brought a laptop in for me. I was super into The Sims at that time (I hadn't heard of WoW by then) and so I actually sat up for the first time for about 15 minutes so I could play it. This was probably about day 5. It was a really big step for me, and after I said I was done I laid down completely exhausted. The next day the nurse told me I was going to try to walk. I was pretty against it, but she pretty much dragged me out of the bed and helped me walk around the room once. I can't even describe what the headache felt like after that. I've never had a migraine that's come close to the pain, so I don't really know what to compare it to. After that though, I felt confident that the back of my head wouldn't explode when I got up, so I was ready to do more.
One of those days, my neurosurgeon came in and said that the surgery went well, and the nausea was because of that portion of my brain being too low. He said he was pretty sure that my headache would go away soon, and if it didn't, they might need to depressurize some of my brain by putting a shunt in the side of it. Neither of those things happened.
We were really wanting me to get home. That kid that was in ICU with me that had the same surgery was gone after 4 days, and he was doing awesome. On day 9, Mom got the nurses to feed me enough gravol to knock me out for 8 hours. Every so often, she'd wake me up and shove some vanilla Boost into my mouth, and then would let me go back to sleep. I wasn't awake long enough to throw it up, so by the end of the day I got two Boosts in me, which was enough for me to go home.
Car rides home from the hospital are always hell. We put me in the front seat of the car that would eventually be mine, the Opaz. My parents handed me an ice cream bucket and shoved blankets on top of me, and off we went. I managed to keep my stomach in me the whole way home.
To sum this part of my life up, I went into the hospital expecting about a 4 day stay, to stay steady at 117lbs, and to be headache free when I left. I was in there for 9 days, lost 11 lbs, and had a headache worse than when I went in. However, I was alive, and therefore I count this surgery as a success.
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