food... food... FOOD!!!

Bridget just ate her first food since last Tuesday! She did a barium swallow test (just like Curious George), and passed for a few of the items. She is allowed to eat purees/"nectar" consistency, but given how well she did eating after the test, I'm sure she'll progress up the food ranks rapidly. Bridget ordered mashed potatoes (with lots of butter) and chocolate ice cream (with weird thickener). Bridget started slow, but then basically DEVOURED the mashed potatoes. She really liked the ice cream too, but couldn't finish the whole thing. She was extremely tired from all of her workouts today (up in a chair twice and transferring on and off a gurney), and so while she was eating she was a strange mixture of energetically ravenous yet close to falling asleep. Bridget just told me to say that, for those of you who know the story of our cat Maddy's mashed potato frenzy, this was pretty similar. Here is a photo of the action, that captures her fatigue more than her sheer excitement:

This is SUCH good news! This is going to improve Bridget's current quality of life dramatically. Food will be her much needed fuel for the road to recovery. I would like to revise the age-old adage to say that food is the best medicine.

Bridget had an MRI scan last night (at 12:15 am!) to check on her brain's recovery. Dr. Newell said the scan didn't reveal any surprises, which is good. It did not detect any remnants of the cavernous malformation or any new problems. He said it mostly showed blood products in the region of the surgery, which were expected.

This information suddenly made me realize something about Bridget's current symptoms which I had failed to think about up until now (I blame the severe stress and the sleep deprivation). Immediately after surgery, there was a lot of talk about the swelling of her brain at the surgery site, which could contribute to her symptoms. Then there was that whole enlarged ventricles issue, which exacerbated the swelling and such. But given that now Bridget's swelling has begun to go down, the bulk of her symptoms are likely due to the blood products that are hanging out in regions of the brain where they shouldn't. In fact, this is the same problem as the bleeds which her cavernous malformation were causing in the first place: blood gettin' all up in the brain's business.

In the case of surgery, it appears the bleeding was more intense and thus more widespread. What has to happen now, in order for her symptoms to resolve, is for the blood products to be reabsorbed into the body/tissue. This could take 3-6 months, and maybe even longer.

I talked with Bridget a little bit about this issue this morning. Her and I both were not expecting the surgery to result in this many symptoms. We knew that it *could* happen like this, but of course we were hoping it would be easier. A couple of times in the last few days Bridget has asked - mostly sarcastically but with an kernel of veracity - whether having this surgery was a stupid idea. It might seem this way, but of course, we know this is not the case. Leaving that monster in there could have caused these problems on it's own sometime in the future. Plus, Bridget *will* heal from this, we believe that 100%. But it's important to face reality: this is going to be a difficult process.

The next big step for Bridget is to start rehab. She may get actually transferred to the rehab floor tomorrow afternoon, but we're not entirely sure yet. Rehab is going to be tough: 3 hours a day of difficult activity. So, they need to be sure that she can handle that level of work.

But if there's anybody who's going to be able to handle it, it's SUPER BRIDGET!