End of day 2

After a game of Blokus, Rosie got up to the toilet again and it was about 10:00, time for everybody to think about going to bed. Jessye will spend the night with Rosie, sleeping on the lazyboy (Rosie objects to my snoring).


At 10:30 or so, a room with the correct orientation of the bed for Rosie's vision became available and she and Jessye were installed there for the night. Rosie had another headache and felt a little nauseous so was given her Panadol and anti-nausea medicine. I stayed till she fell asleep and then left my two babies for the night.

The wanderers return

Just as I was about to go to my room, the nurse woke Rosie up to check blood pressure and give tablets and, happily, her headache and throbbing had disappeared. Just then the intrepid pair returned in time to provide the night's entertainment.










David Chickering rang from NZ and talked to Rosie. She was able to sit up quite freely and move her head without pain before lying down again.

Evening of day 2

Jessye and Sophie caught the train into the city after Rosie had been sleeping for a while since it was clear she was going to be wanting a lot of that tonight. Hopefully, they will make it back to North Ryde at some point.

Rosie's had headaches on and off, sometimes worse than others but she's managed to go back to sleep despite them. With the help of two tiny nurses, she was able to stand and walk to her bathroom to use her actual toilet this afternoon without feeling dizzy. She stood and walked to the sink to wash her hands with hardly any help and then back to her bed. She had a few bites of her ward dinner of vege tagine and rice plus a few bites of risotto patties from the cafe and a couple of spoonfuls of vanilla icecream. Later, when she woke up she had a bad headache and asked if the throbbing of her heart beat in her head was going to be permanent. I told her to remember that it was only yesterday that she had brain surgery and that I was pretty sure the throbbing and the headaches would gradually go away. Michael Morgan likes his patients to only have Panadol if possible and he talked to Rosie before the surgery about tolerating some headache within reason rather than taking too much strong pain medicine.

Since then, after a few minutes of just lying still and tolerating her headache, not really able to get comfortable, she managed to nod off and has been sleeping peacefully for about an hour. Her room is quite cool and I'm feeling like I need to go to my room and get a cardigan but Rosie doesn't seem to feel the cold - she's fine lying in her hospital gown with mostly bare shoulders and a light blanket up to her waist. I'm going to go and get something warm to wear, try to track down the other two and then come back. Hopefully Rosie will still be sleeping.

All ensconced

All very happy to be on the ward.




One minor glitch - Rosie immediately noticed that the room was backwards compared to the one she was in before surgery. Because she has no right field of vision, she only sees what is on her left. In her current room, the place for people to sit is on the right of the bed. we moved the bed 45 degrees to create some space on the left for chairs and they will keep an eye out for one facing the other way to open up.

Location:Technology Pl,Macquarie Park,Australia

Moving to the ward

The welcoming committee arrived in Rosie's room, awaiting her arrival.

Lunchtime ICU

Rosie's looking much brighter and has had all her tubes including catheter removed in preparation for moving to the ward. Hard to believe that just 24 hours ago she was waking up after having someone fossicking around deep in her brain! She's still not up to moving her head around much, particularly lifting it off the support of the bed head, so Jessye made a feeble attempt at feeding her some lunch, dropping potato down her front instead.




Rosie wasn't impressed with the brussels sprouts anyway and sent me to the cafe for a ham and cheese toastie.

Day 2 ICU

At 11:30am, Michael Morgan and his team came to see Rosie. He reported that the CT showed no blood in the cavity which was good and that they would now discontinue the intravenous steroid. Rosie is now pretty much headache-free and has started eating lightly with some cereal for breakfast. Michael says she should be OK to move to the ward later today and may have the "hat" removed tomorrow. Needless to say, Rosie was pleased about moving to the ward as that may mean she can finally get some sleep!



Jessye and Sophie are sitting with her now. We all enjoyed tea, coffee and scones at Jo's place this morning since we had to wait till 11 to see Rosie. She had a sponge wash this morning before CT and had her blood pressure monitoring line moved to the left arm because the right one wasn't working well (veins on her right arm are always a bit dodgy for sticking needles into). She is back to short texting - this morning texted me to bring the toothpaste when we came to visit.

Location:ICU

Overnight day 1

Peter and the girls came back to the ICU at 6:30pm and Rosie was able to have visits from 2 at a time. She was really tired and just wanted to go to sleep but one doesn't go to the ICU for a good sleep! Every half hour the nurse would shine a light in her eyes, ask her some pertinent questions like "who is the Prime Minister of Australia?", "what month is it", " where are you" etc. during the course of the afternoon and evening, Rosie's speech and response improved although she was shocked and bewildered when she was woken from deep sleep to do the "test".

Peter went back home last night. I wasn't allowed to stay with Rosie overnight but was free to call and check on her at any time. It was good to get some sleep but I called a couple of times during the night. She had a headache so was given pain relief around 2am then settled again. At 7am her blood pressure was a little low so her intravenous fluids were increased. During the night she was given half-hourly assessments till midnight then hourly so she was sleeping in small snatches. The nurse said she was going back to sleep pretty quickly after each assessment and was reluctant to wake up - not surprising.

The girls and I rang this morning at about 7:30 and talked to her. When I asked how she was feeling she said "tired" but she managed a short conversation with each of us. She is having a CT scan this morning which will give us more information. We three are being picked up soon to visit Jo Costantino (former cellist of NZSQ) who lives 5 mins away. She's lending us a car for the day so we'll come back to see Rosie at 11:00am. Jessye will hopefully meet and get to know Jo's daughter, Sofia, who will be in Japan for 7 weeks including the 3 weeks Jessye will be there from Jan 22.