Improvement

The area of the brain that Dr. Zhu, Rachel's neurosurgeon, operated on affected the motor skills on the right side and was close to the five senses. Before surgery, Dr. Zhu told us that Rachel would need physical therapy, her speech would most likely be "blurry" and she would probably have some short time memory loss. Both speech problems and memory problems would be corrected over time. So far, Rachel has had NO speech problems and does not seem to have any memory loss. (She is blessed.) She does need the therapy.

On Saturday morning Rachel began both physical and occupational therapy--a half hour of each. Physical therapy includes standing, walking, balancing, muscle tone, etc.; occupational therapy includes daily activities like getting dressed, combing hair, etc. The nurses also walked her around the ward.

She is also starting to eat real food. Saturday at noon she had some chicken noodle soup, orange sherbert and hot tea. That evening she ate macaroni and cheese. Sunday morning she had an omelet. By the time we saw her on Sunday, she had been taken off of all IV solutions. The medication that helped control nausea which dripped into her system was also gone and she was very sick. This, too, is not unexpected. So, she was put back on the IV with the nausea control. She has lost some weight, but does NOT recommend non-eating hospital stays, surgery or liquid diets to maintain weight control!!!

Yesterday Rachel had 8 visitors during the afternoon, plus her family, and was very cheerful. She was finally "up" to seeing people and chatting. She told us that it had been a good day. Thank you for all your support, cards, e-mails, etc. Remember, that she can have some bad spells and needs lots of rest, so if you do visit, do not be disappointed if she tells you not to stay long.

We look at her surgery as a three part process. 1) The surgery itself was very scary, but successful (Dr. Zhu's opinion and our opinion). Rachel was amazingly brave. 2) We are now praying that the pathology report will bring us the good news that the tumor is on the benign side of the spectrum instead of the agressive side. Evidently there is a gradation of tumor growth between the two. We will get that report Wednesday. 3) Rachel's recovery will be swift and complete. Dr. Zhu told us in the pre-surgery discussion that he expected all to go well during the surgery; that Rachel is young and highly motivated to get on with her life; that she should be ready to return to BU this fall and continue her graduate studies. So far, so good. There have been no negative surprises, only positive ones of no "blurry" speech or memory loss.

Kris and Tom