Acoustic Neuroma part 2

God answered my prayers. I survived the surgery. What the surgeons found once inside my head was a different than what they expected. Normal acoustic neuroma grow as one blob filling the cannel. Being special, like my dad has always told me, my acoustic neuroma grew like a wad of spaghetti that has been twirled around a fork, or in this case my facial and hearing nerves. They made attempts to document the tumor uniqueness with photos, but the cameras they had in the surgery suite would not work right, even though they had been tested before hand. The surgery lasted longer than normal as they had to un-tangle the mass of tumor from my nerves. The one request that I had made of surgeons was to do what they could to save what was left of my hearing. They respected my request and did what they could.

There were side effects from the surgery and the process taken to remove the tumor. My facial nerve was stretched but still in tack. I looked like I had a stroke. The whole left side of my face did not work. My eye would not close when I tried to close it. I could not keep my lips together. I couldn't smile, or chew food, or even drink from a glass. Of all things I could have prayed for I prayed to survive. Why didn't I think about the state I would be surviving in?

It was too much for my husband to take. He stayed the first night with me but as soon as my parents showed up the next day he took off. He went back to work and spent as little time with me at the hospital as possible. At the time I never gave any thought to how it must have been for him to have to look at me like that. I could just avoid looking mirrors or keep people from taking my picture and I could pretend that my face still worked, but he could not. Me sitting across the table from him was a constant reminder. He never said but I think it might have been heartbreaking to look at me.

As expected, they had cut my balance nerve to remove the tumor. My brain then had to figure out that one balance center was no longer sending information, until it adjusted itself to this fact my world was spinning. I was on bed rest for the first 24 hours, being a fall risk they didn't want me up until my brain had started to make the adjustment. The doctors drug of choice was morphine. I had never had it before as they do not give it to you when you have your tonsil removed. It was an interesting experience. The nurse gave me my first dose in the IV port in my left arm. As the morphine went up my arm it burned slightly, when it made it to my heart and lungs I found it very hard to breath and my heart was racing as fast as I had ever experienced. This tightness in my chest and a racing heart beat seemed to go on for several minutes. I thought that this was the normal reaction to it, and that why some get addicted to it cause they like that intense feel of impending death. (isn't that the reason people jump out of perfectly good airplanes?) I decided then that the pain in my head from the surgery wasn't that bad and I would only take the morphine again, if I couldn't stand it anymore. I think that I had only 2 more doses after that, a nurse finally notice that I was having trouble breathing as she pushed them morphine and asked for different pain meds for me. I know now that I was have an allergic reaction to the morphine, but I did not make the connection then.

My brain made the switch to just one balance nerve pretty quickly. I was released from the hospital on the third day. the ride home from the hospital was a bit scary, but I didn't get sick. Over the next few weeks my Mom came and stayed with me during the day so my husband could go to work. We sat and visited mostly, be we did get out and do some walking. Exception of my face I was recovering well. I stayed out of work my full 6 weeks. I had made adjustments to how I did stuff. like I would drink from a straw instead of the glass, holding the side of my month that didn't work together with my fingers. I put eye gel in my eye to keep it wet. I stop wearing my contacts, because you can't really see clearly thru the gel. As I said I stopped looking in mirrors, so had lulled myself into denial, or maybe that is marched myself into denial.

My first day back at work, one of my co-works as he saw me for the first time said, "What the heck happen to you?" my response was "brain surgery". His response, "I know that but what happen to your face?"

My family and friends had aided my in my denial, as each one would say its not that bad, you can hardly tell, If you didn't know your face you could pass for normal. I love them, but they lie. I know this because I had seen my face, but didn't want to face it. My left eye didn't close and when I blinked my right eye the left would roll back up in my head seeking shelter. As for the rest of my face, I look like botox job gone wrong, no worries of wrinkles and nothing moved.

The surgeons told me that there was a chance the nerve would come back in the mean time they sent me to speak and physical therapy. I was one step away from mush mouth.