Sunday, March 16th – 6:00AM

We had a scare last night. The phone rang at ~3AM at my parents’ house. It was the surgeon on duty and he wanted for us to give approval to do a ventriculostomy. A ventriculostomy puts a hole with a drain where the doctors could allow some of his cerebral-spinal fluid (CSF) to drain and relieve the pressure in his head. Throughout the day, we’ve learned that they suspect that the blood in his brain is interfering with the normal drainage of CSF. Apparently, every day, our brains make CSF to refresh and replace some of the fluid that’s already in there. In my dad’s case, he wasn’t draining the fluid that was being replaced and just accumulating more and more CSF, which was increasing the pressure in his head.

We rushed to the hospital where they were still prepping my dad for surgery. It took them all of about 15 minutes to insert the catheter and allow him to relieve that pressure by draining some CSF fluid. The impact was almost immediate. Within two hours, his temperature had dropped more than 1.5 degrees and he was much less lethargic.