Here are the past few days, as represented by the e-mails I've sent out to friends. I would have posted sooner, but for some reason the internet at the hospital won't let me into blogger. My father-in-law sent me home to take a shower, because we all know I needed it. I'm about to go back up there and hopefully the next post will say "We're home!"

I sent this e-mail to the girls in my Bible Study on Monday night/Tuesday morning:

Hey girls! It's 1:30am and I just got back from picking up another prescription for the husb. He woke up around 11:00 tonight with a pretty bad headache and feeling nauseous again. He took another round of the pain medicine, but threw it up. Around 12:00 he asked me to call the doctor to find out what to do. The doctor said he would call in a prescription, but asked me to where. This guy is a moron. I told him the Walgreens in Benton is 24 hours, but I didn't know if the pharmacy was. He asked what the phone number was (!) and told me he'd call back. When he called back he said the pharmacy wouldn't open until 7:30am and it'd be ready then. When I told Jon, he said he can't throw up all night so I called the one on Bowman and it was 24 hour. So I called the doctor back, gave him the phone number, and told him to call it in. I picked it up and he just took it a few minutes ago. The doctor said that if he's not well by the morning, he may have to go back in and get ANOTHER blood patch. Please please pray that we don't have to do this and that God heals him overnight of the nausea, headache, and backache. I know most of you won't see this until morning/afternoon but pray as soon as you get it, please.
Good news is that I picked up some half price Cadbury Creme Eggs while I was at the Walgreens, and that I made possibly the best cheesecake ever tonight for the potluck tomorrow (tonight). Hopefully I'll be there!
Love you girls!
Ashley

My sister-in-law, Candice, sent this one out later Tuesday morning:

The story really does continue! Ashley took Jon back to the ER this morning around 5am because he had another bad headache and was still sick. They started an IV and are giving him fluids and pain medicine. The ER doctor tentatively told them it may not be another spinal headache in need of a patch but might just be dehydration so I guess they will try to rehydrate him and see how it goes. Continue to pray for them and we will keep you updated!

Candice

Then I sent this one out this Wednesday morning:

We have decided to mostly cut off the neurologist that has been working with Jon the whole time. (The one who recommended the lumbar puncture and just keeps pushing drugs.) Jon's mom stayed overnight last night and let me go home. While she was here, that doctor came by and just kept wanting to try new medicines. His mom realized, after talking to the doctor and Jon, that she may have actually figured this whole thing out. They've been trying a bunch of medicines while he's been here and some make him sick and some don't. She realized that one of the ones making him sick was one of the ones he's also been taking at home. This doctor had prescribed it for him back in December and he had started taking it when he got a migraine. It was at this point that he started having the constant migraine from January through March. So this whole thing may simply be related to a medicine he's not reacting well with.
When the doctor who's been treating him here at the hospital comes this morning, I'm going to be asking get a recommendation for another doctor so we can get another opinion/idea of what to do. If she doesn't have one, I also have 4 doctors that the girls at Bible study recommended last night.
He has finished all three of the medicine regiments he was going to be taking to try to get rid of the headache that brought us here yesterday morning, so hopefully the doctor will be in sometime this morning to talk with us and we can quickly get a new neurologist's opinion. (The neurologist came in a few minutes ago and said we can do the regiment again with a slightly higher dosage. That will last until someone else can come in and give an idea.) We're still in 5009 at St. Vincent. Feel free to visit. I finally remembered to bring the laptop and they have internet in the rooms, so I'll be checking e-mail throughout the day. If you just want to call, my cell phone number is 515-8412. Thank you so much for all of your prayers. This will be over soon. We love all of y'all!
Ashley (and Jon too... telepathically)

And this one Wednesday night:

Alright. Here we go. When the regular doctor (who has been treating him since we've been here) came in this afternoon, we told her that we wanted to get another neurologist. She said that only four neurologists even come to St. Vincent for consults. One was our moron, two were "useless" according to her, and there was one other who was only available on Wednesday and Thursday. So we were lucky with that. She came in to talk to us and I told her all of the information. After I told her that we thought that some of the medicines might be a large cause of the problems, she said that we can take him off of all of them and see what happens. She also said that another medicine he had been taking for another problem could also be contributing to the headaches, so he's going to stop taking that too, and just stick with the medicine that he takes when the headache comes. The medicines that had been potentially causing it were ones he was taking every day to prevent the migraines. Didn't do such a great job, eh?
The regular doctor talked to the radiologist who had done the original blood patch and they decided it might do better the second time. They have scheduled a second blood patch for tomorrow morning. They are having him lie flat and increasing his saline intake in his IV to increase the chances that this blood patch will go well. I'm guessing they will be doing the same immediately afterward also. The problems after the lumbar puncture and blood patch may have come from not enough fluids. He was supposed to drink a LOT afterward, but you can't drink a lot when you're asleep from the medicines. Hopefully the IV will help with that problem. We are not going to leave, though, until we're sure that he's completely better after the blood patch, since they don't sell IV machines at Walgreen's.
Keep up the prayers! Thanks again. And thanks to those of you who have come to visit and bring things. We love you guys!
Ashley

Posted in: hospital visit, husb on Thursday, March 27, 2008 at at 1:51 PM