Jerad Bitner

After a quick cup of coffee and a hug from Jim, I drove to the hospital to be with Jenney before the surgery. When I got to the room, curled up in the hospital bed with her and we held each other and cried. At 6am they came in to prep for surgery, then wheeled her down to the pre-surgery area. I remember an area where there were lots of lights and alcoves. In one of the alcoves they placed us and put a monitor on the baby to get a read on his heartbeat. The quick pulse was comforting to our ears. Jenney mentioned double vision, and they noted it during another eval.

In the morning the Neurologist, Dr. Hammer came to see us. She said she had referred us to Dr. Goldman as she would be out later in the week and wanted to ensure we had continuity of care. She answered our questions, showed us the MRI, explained how an operation might proceed, assured us that this was a very good time for the pregnancy for an operation, and assured us that the chances of success for where the tumor was located were very good. Dr. Goldman would be in to see us later that morning to evaluate Jenney and would most likely want to operate as soon as possible.

Jenney fell again while I was helping her to the bathroom, and I caught her. She had been having a headache and thought she needed to pee, but once it subsided realized she in fact did not. I took her back to bed and didn’t give her the option this time. We were going to the ER.

I heard a crash from upstairs. I ran up to find Jenney naked on the floor of the bathroom. She had blacked out and fell on her way to the toilet. She’d been taking baths every so often as she found the water somewhat soothing, and wasn’t bothering to put clothes back on since she just went back to bed. I urged her to go to the ER. She refused saying we had an appointment on Monday with the OB who could advise us better. She didn’t want to go and have them charge us more money and say, “Take some Tylenol” again. But after that I watched her like a hawk and didn’t let her go to the bathroom alone.

Jenney’s migraines started on Feb 10th while we were in San Diego visiting her mom. We had planned on taking the kids to Disney while we were there but Jenney could barely leave her bed, much less the house. She had vomited a couple times as well. The migraines came anywhere from 15 to 50 minutes at a time, lasted 5 to 10 minutes, and only seemed to subside at night or in the mornings. We started keeping a log.