Made it Through Another...

Greetings fellow bloggers! It's Mike this time...blogging from the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) in Bethesda, MD. Wow, what a turn of events.

Angie ("Pooh") gave a pretty good summary in the previous blog. Basically, I was fully recovered from December's surgery, feeling fine, the what appeared to be just a headache snowballed into a craniotomy #4! Far be it from me to place blame, but from what we now know it appears that something unsterile was introduced into the cranium during my last surgery. That was enough to foster an infection under the frontal plate, which has slowly festered for the past few months. It then exited through my right temple and began to attack the soft tissue above and around my right eye, which is when I first became aware of it. By the time we noticed and got to the ER on Monday afternoon, the infection had destroyed the entire frontal plate and done some damage to the sinus cavity and even the dura (sack surrounding the brain).

Surgery yesterday morning was actually not craniotomy #4, it was craniectomy #1 -- the removal of the frontal plate. After some pretty serious labwork to figure out which bug (or bugs) have been throwing a party in my head for the last seven months, I'll be put on targeted antibiotics and sent home -- probably 3 - 4 days. I'll come back in 14 days for a checkup and to get the sutures removed, then back in about 6 months for a cranioplasty. They've made a mold of the bone that was removed, and will recreate it with either titanium mesh or a plastic polymer. The idea is to make me look basically the same as I looked before the event -- I asked if they could make me better looking, but apparently it's pretty hard to improve on what I've already got ;-).

I feel just okay. Not a lot of pain or discomfort, this struggle is far more emotional. I wasn't ready for this. I didn't have time to educate myself or prepare, mentally, emotionally, and psychologically, for this event. The hospital is not nearly as nice as Cedars-Sinai, and it's pretty lonely. I think things will improve as I spend more time here, but more than anything I just want to go home.

I owe quite a few blogs, including several race reports. In short, training has gone very well -- I've hooked up with the FIRST folks, and their training plans have been working for me so far. They've been profiled a number of times in Runner's World, so you may have heard of them. I'm focusing on half-marathons right now -- did the Marine Corps Half, and was happy with 1:41, and had planned to do the Air Force Half on 19 September, but will probably have to miss that one to recover. I hope to follow with the Richmond SunTrust Half and the Oktoberfest Half-Marathon, but we'll see how recovery goes.

I'm on a public PC at the hospital, so can't upload photos...but if you're on FB, I've put a few there. More to follow...I may actually have time to catch up on my blogs now! Thanks to all the bloggers who have already sent me notes and posts on FB...you all ROCK, as usual. Keep praying!