We arrived at the hospital just before 7am, got checked in and everything without any problem. John had to take some drug to calm him, but since he couldn't have any carbs, we had to mix it in some diet pop that we had brought. Unfortunately, the drug had a very strong taste and John wouldn't touch it at all. So, they had to stick a syringe thing up his nose to get the medicine in him. He was screaming through all of that, but as soon as the medicine got in him he instantly calmed down. Within minutes he started acting completely drunk. It reminded us a little of how he was when he was first put on high doses of his seizure medication.
We carried him towards the operating room, but at one point they stopped us and said we couldn't go any further. He was so out of it by that point that he didn't mind leaving us behind. That was about 8:30am.
The wait was brutal, of course. At around 10:30, one of the nurses came by and said they were done and he did great. That was a big relief. A couple of minutes later one of the doctors came by and said everything went fine, and that he was in the recovery room and somebody would come get us when he woke up. Just then, the nurse came in and told us that he was already awake. So, we went to the recovery room and he was being held by a nurse. He was still wearing his pants and slippers! He was completely out of it, but I think he knew when Yoshie was able to hold him. His incisions didn't look very big at all. I was expecting them to be much bigger for sure.
After staying there for a few minutes, the surgeon came in and repeated that everything had gone great. He said John's vagus nerve looked good and was easily accessible. He said something about the impedence being 1-1, which is the best. I'm not sure what that means, but I'll look it up later. After they were sure John was stable, we went to his room. After that, it was just the typical hospital experience. He did develop a big bruise on his belly that concerned the nurse enough that the neurosurgery nurse had to come up to take a look at it. We just monitored it closely to make sure it didn't get any worse - it didn't.
So, everything went fine and we were able to come home today. After being home for a few hours, John vomited a couple of times. Yoshie called the nurse and they didn't sound too surprised. They said to call back if he continues to vomit.
One interesting thing is that John had his best seizure day in a long, long time today. That was a bit surprising. It could be because of the Tylenol. Or, it could be the antibiotic. Or, it could be that he just wasn't very active. Or, as always, it could just be chance. We were expecting the seizures to get worse. That certainly didn't happen.
