THE STAR OF THEIR SHOW

John and I were big fans of the TV show House when it first came out -- back before it turned into a soap opera. We used to wonder if there really were doctors like him and his team in hospitals, who just sat around their dry-erase boards, tossing ideas back and forth to each other, while avoiding actual patient contact as much as possible. It seemed a bit far fetched to us. Well, I'm here to tell you that, here at our hospital, there are several Houses, with herds that follow them everywhere, and my hubby has a cameo role in their latest episode.  We have the neuro herd, the internist herd, the hypertension herd, etc., and they take turns huddling beside his bed, shining their flashlights in his eyes and asking him to wiggle his toes, then murmur amongst themselves, occasionally sharing with me a few highlights from their last powwow.

The first doctor we had contact with -- the one who performed John's angiogram as soon as he was admitted -- warned me that this would be a marathon, not a sprint. He said the fact that John was alert and talking was good, but cautioned me that we were still in the eye of the storm so to speak. He wasn't kidding.

I overheard one member of this mornings heard say to John as he was leaving, "You're really lucky man, that's a lot of blood in your brain." That blood is now working it's way out through his spinal fluids, and are the reason his headache, dizziness and nausea are worse now than they were when he came in. I guess the fact that he doesn't already have permanent damage from all that blood is our first little miracle. We're gonna need a few more.

In addition to them figuring out how to keep his blood pressure down so he doesn't have another bleed, we need to pray that he can go a couple of weeks without any vasospasms -- a sudden constriction of an artery which causes a decrease in blood flow, which in turn can cause a stroke. Here his "old clay pipe" veins might actually be in his favor, as they are less likely to do this. A woman comes in every day with a "doppler" machine, like an ultrasound, and spends about 30 minutes rubbing it around on his head, going whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, searching for any signs of constriction. If he can go at least eight days without this happening, everyone will finally start to breath a little easier.

As my daughter said when she came dragging over the finish line of her first 5K mud run recently, "I really should have trained for this!"