The Cryptococcus is dead but its effects continue.

The pressure in my brain from the swelling from the damage the meningitis caused was not going down.  The doctors decided to treat this with a third ventriculostomy. This all happened on September 17. I’ve been told this is where they drill a hole in your head and put a passage from one side of the brain to the other. On October 8, I had to two Grand MAL seizures when the gauges monitoring the pressure in my brain were removed.

On October 12 they gave me a trach to wean me off the ventilator. My spouse had been worried because they would keep trying to remove the ventilator and then replace it when they would become worried I would “forget” to breathe.  At this point I was still not quite in a coma but not really responding either.

All through this time, I was a mess of tubing.  I had had chest tubes to drain my lungs of fluid.  I had a feeding tube that just refused to stay in place and when it did, the techs would accidentally dislodge it when I had MRIs and CTs.  This was also addition to the drainage tubes from the ventriculostomy and gauges.  Suction tube for the ventilator along with all the IV tubing and the tubing for my waste products. They are able to remove the trach by October 27. They had slowly made the trach smaller the more aware I became.

The next step is rehab.