Two Months

This is the information I sent to friends and family. To it I will add the following:
He had a lumbar tap which confirmed high brain pressure. They're changing up the blood thinners and trying to figure out which ones work best. He thought he was going home today but had some unexpected poop accident and now they want to test his poop for bugs. So I think I am going to have lunch with my sister instead of picking him up. He's bummed. 

Happy 2 Month Illness-aversary!

 

Summary (cause this will be a long one)

Mrguy is back in the hospital getting some stuff checked out. I am home with the kitties. It's all good.

 

Detail

Papilledema

Last week we learned about the eye problem Pappiledema (see below or you may google), which is caused by pressure in the brain. We went to the hospital for a head MRI on Tuesday evening at the request of our neurologist, and he called yesterday to kindly ask us to go to the ER  because mrguy has a small blood clot in his brain. So we drove to the hospital again. It was a gorgeous day, a gorgeous drive. We are trying to stay positive.

 

What Now?

Doctors of various disciplines are trying to figure out how to treat the clot and the underlying problem, which may be that the anticoagulant he's on might not be working as effectively as it needs to. This, in turn, may be causing the eye problems because the clot could be leaning on an important vessel. Anyhoo, he had a whole room of neurologists looking at him at one point today (students, doctors).

 

What's Good About It?

On the plus side, we're glad that we went to the ER at the hospital because he has had a lot of attention from doctors of all disciplines: neurology, hematology, oncology. All of the ologies! And that this clot was found through testing and not a stroke. Right? He'll probably be in the hospital for the next few days. In the meantime he is being seen by all.

 

Lumbar Tap

Later today they are going to do a lumbar tap (aka spinal tap). They'll take a needle into his spine and draw out some fluid. This will (hopefully) allow them to reduce some intracranial pressure (eye happiness!) and test the pressure of the fluid, which might give them some answers about what to do next.

 

Clotting

And also in the meantime they're trying to figure out which anticoagulant is doing the best job, and how his blood is clotting. I had no idea that you could test how quickly your blood coagulates. Weird.

 

His chemo is postponed until we figure this out.