The next 24 hours goes about as I expected. I didn’t get out of bed except to go to the restroom and I had no appetite. I was really queasy, but no vomiting. I mentally geared myself up to go get labs done on Wed, day 5 post-op withholding cortisol/ACTH labs.  Now I will say that it was pretty rough at this point, but withholding gave me a major setback. I was having lots of anxiety clock-watching and praying the time to pass. Brushing my teeth literally made me vomit. My husband bought Ensure because I could barely eat a yogurt or pudding. By Friday night I felt so awful that I insisted my husband call my neurosurgeon directly and get me an Rx for nausea.  I really thought I was prepared to feel bad, and I knew feeling bad was good…but folks this was more than I could handle.

Saturday, with the zofran on board I was able to cope through the day. By Sunday I started feeling slightly better but not well enough to take a bath until Monday. I was scheduled for an ENT check on Tuesday (day 10) and I really didn’t know if I’d be able to make the trip down even Tuesday morning. I took it slow and was able to go thankfully. My ENT ‘irrigated’ me with scope and suction and whoa! I could breathe again! My neurosurgeon stopped in at my request as I was pretty upset having received my day 5 labs – cortisol 22.6 and ACTH 114 (9-48); he admits to be surprised at how high my ACTH was, and his initial thoughts were it was still a surgical response.  Symptoms are strong indicator and I am told to not give up hope based on those labs. I got my path report too. It’s confusing at best but my neurosurgeon felt it was a ‘positive’, though he also believes that a normal path report would not be unheard of and the report should be taken into consideration of the whole picture.