Category: brain cancer

  • Chapter 21: Radiation and Brain School

    Dustin was discharged from inpatient acute rehab at Shirley Ryan Ability Lab on August 14th, 2018 after only a week. But it was a necessary week. Dustin was improving his cognition quite quickly but still needed to have 24/7 supervision. We had a plan moving forward with outpatient day rehab at Shirley Ryan but it…

  • Chapter 20: Inpatient Brain School

    Dustin ended up spending a week in inpatient rehab at the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab. While many parts of this stay frustrated Dustin a lot, it was ultimately a huge benefit. The facility itself had just rebranded itself and built a brand new state of the art building just a block away from Northwestern Memorial…

  • Chapter 18: Cognitive dysfunction

    The effects of Dustin’s seizures, surgery, and swelling had a significant impact on Dustin’s cognitive abilities. Thankfully, they improved over time but it was really scary the first few months after surgery. The rest of Dustin’s hospitalization was relatively uneventful. He was on continuous EEG monitoring for seizures after surgery. From what we could tell,…

  • Chapter 17: Evil Girlfriend and Shakira

    Right after surgery it takes a little bit of time for the nurses to settle the patients in the ICU. I knew this so I waited. As soon as I was notified that I could come to the neuro ICU to see Dustin, I ran to see him and assess how he’s doing myself. When…

  • Chapter 16: Awake Brain Surgery

    Dustin’s surgery was officially scheduled. His surgery would be the first case on Friday, August 3rd, 2018. The week leading up to Friday was a lot of “hurry up and wait” – hurry up and do the fMRI, wait, hurry up and do the neuropsych testing, wait, keep monitoring for seizures, wait. The neurosurgeon, Matt,…

  • Chapter 15: Pre-operative testing

    Dustin had to do pretty extensive pre-operative (pre-op) testing before his scheduled awake craniotomy. He had the continuous EEG to monitor and record seizure activity. This allows the docs to adjust his anticonvulsant medications. Ideally, he would be going into the surgery seizure free as that is the safest. The other important testing prior to…

  • Chapter 14: The Epileptologist

    Now that you know the basic anatomy, function, and components of the brain, let’s talk about electricity. The brain is a complex network that communicates by sending electrical impulses. Sometimes these electrical impulses get blocked or stuck in a loop. Regardless of what you’re doing, your brain is always on and sending and receiving these…

  • Chapter 13: The Anatomy of the Brain

    The brain is a beautiful and complex enigma of the central nervous system (CNS). The central nervous system is comprised of the brain and spinal cord. The brain is big processing center and the the spinal cord relays information between our brain and the nerves in the other areas of our bodies. The skull and…

  • Chapter 12: The Symphony

    Having worked in various roles in healthcare since 2009, I’ve been exposed to all sorts of interesting people and situations. With patients and families you’re often seeing them during the darkest and most difficult times in their life. If you’re lucky, you might see them on the happiest days of their life as they welcome…

  • Chapter 11: The Neurosurgeon

    People in healthcare are often interesting humans. Like any number of professions, healthcare often has lots of stereotypes associated with specific roles. Surgeons are often stereotyped as arrogant and crass. Oncologists are often stereotyped as kind and overly optimistic. Psychiatrists are often stereotyped as quirky but good listeners. Nurses are either stereotyped as angles or…