Things have settled down a little this morning, improving upon the critical of last night / early morning. Maggie’s temp is back down to 100, but she is extremely weak and not very responsive to questions, movement, etc. She is mostly answering questions with her eyes.
The doctors have ordered a slew of tests to get at the root of this infection. Her pneumonia, though, appears to be improving. She’s had about 4 seizures this morning, but the large jerky movements have gone away.
When I left the hospital tonight, Maggie was fighting a 105 degree temperature from an infection. When I called the room later tonight to check in, the doctors had gotten it down to 103. They have put Maggie in isolation as they keep the environment as controlled as possible to beat the infection. Maggie is continuing to have a very, very difficult battle.
Kathi and her friend, Christy, are staying with Maggie throughout the night.
Meanwhile, the doctors are continuing to try to get Maggie stable on the new seizure med so they can get this additional test done. She had seizures throughout the day, although they were a lot calmer than previous days.
Maggie’s seizures continue on. However, for today, they appear to be calming down a little. She is very weak and fragile right now. In addition, her entire right peripheral vision is getting impacted when a seizure starts. For the first 20 – 30 seconds, she is unable to see anything on her right side.
The physical therapists have been by to help Maggie with a lot of her muscle tightness. Maggie also got out of the bed a few minutes ago, and is getting her hair washed. We’ll be taking a short trip to the roof-top garden later today, which will be a huge change of scenery for her.
So, the waiting game begins. The doctors are making their rounds, and then the neurology doctors will come in to give the official ok to bring Maggie out of her coma. Then, we wait and see how Maggie will respond as she comes out.
We got confirmation this morning that Maggie does have pneumonia and a urinary tract infection.
We are very thankful that Mark and Christy Watson, our friends from Tupelo, have driven up to be with us this coming week. As Wednesday approaches, it will be 3 weeks since Maggie was admitted to the hospital.
Thank you to everyone who has sent an email and left a comment. Also, thank you to everyone who is interceding on our behalf. I can’t put in to words how desperately we need you.
Well, we met with Maggie’s neurologist today to go over their interpretation of the SPECT scan and MRI mapping. First, a quick update on how Maggie is doing
Maggie is still in her drug-induced coma. She is fighting a high temperature and infection, most likely in her lungs. We’ll learn more later tonight / tomorrow on the infection. This is a common problem when people get intubated with a breating tube. She’s sleeping well, though, and her brain is resting. She’ll get transitioned out of this coma on Sunday.
Now on to the SPECT / MRI mapping.
Maggie’s seizures are well focused and not generalized. That means they are well contained to the right hemisphere in her brain, and are focused on the sensorimotor, frontal, and insular areas on the right side of her brain. The root cause appears to be coming from the insular, near to where the tumor was, but that has to be verified through additional testing.
The doctors don’t feel good about their chances of isolating the entire area of her seizures around the insular region. The region is so vast, that they can’t safely place a lot of sensors. Assuming Maggie’s seizures don’t return after she comes out of her coma on Sunday, they want to run an additional test to help make the decision about placing some probes that deep in her brain. That test can only be done when she is not having any seizures. Hopefully a seizure drug, felbmate, and the drug-induced coma, will help her seizures stop to the point of being able to get that additional test done.
Without being able to place those probes with a high probability of success, surgical resection is out of the question. Assuming that stays out of the question, we move on to options.
The first option is the introduction of a new drug, felbamate. It is usually a drug of last resort, and Maggie is at that point. She started that drug yesterday and is off all other drugs. It will take some time to get fully ramped up on that new drug.
A next option is to get a Vagus nerve stimulator implanted that sends an electrical impulse to the vagus nerve to help control seizures. It doesn’t stop them, but it does help control them. That option would be looked at if her new drug proved to be as ineffective as all of her previous drugs. Our doctor is not that high on Vagus nerve stimulators and we’ll have to research them some more.
A third option is a hemispherotomy, where they disconnect the side of the brain causing all of the seizures. Maggie would no longer have use of that side of her brain. Maggie would also lose significant use of her left hand (non-dominant), lose some peripheral vision, and would have to learn to walk again. Disconnecting the right side of her brain would fully stop her seizures, though. We would have to weigh this option in terms of the impact of her seizures on her life and benefits / losses brought on by the hemisperotomy. This is a most serious option, but it is moving up the list as all of the other options have gotten ticked off.
We will get some second opinions, especially as we get closer to #3. We will doggedly pursue #1 and #2, and other options we may not be aware of right now, before even considering #3.
So, as you can see, the importance of running that additional test next week is critical. It doesn’t have to happen next week, but it would be very good to get it done while we are here. The doctors will be very reluctant to resect the area causing all of her problems unless the probability for success was very high and the probability for getting all of the affected area was high. Right now, the probability for success with a resection is looking low.
We serve a Sovereign God, Who remains in control even when things appear out of control and stacked up against us.
