Category: hospital

  • 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 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…

  • Chapter 10: Wee-woo Wagon #2 and #3

    Monday, July 30th, 2018 started out a little groggy. We were both a little wiped from our weekend trip to Bloomington. However, we both were excited to get back to work like normal people. I had a fairly normal day working on the wards. Dustin’s day was also fairly normal. Whenever Dustin gets home from…

  • Chapter 3: Hierarchy in Medicine

    July is an interesting time of transition in academic hospitals where there is a huge influx of brand new physicians starting their residency program as an intern. But there is also a shift in the residency program from previous years. This results in a new batch of junior residents, senior residents, chief residents, and a…