Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.
This past Saturday, November 4th, Leman started experiencing severe headaches, to the point of vomiting. At first he was contributing it to the anesthesia he had in his system from the last foot procedure he'd had done 2 weeks prior. By Monday night he couldn't take the pain any longer, so he went to the DR. They gave him some shots and some IV fluids thinking he was dehydrated from the vomiting. Those measures helped for a short amount of time, but Leman awoke very early Tuesday morning with a severe headache again. He decided to go see his local doctor, Dr. Haganman. The doctor ordered a CT. The CT results showed an unusual spot on his brain. Dr. Haganman immediately scheduled an appointment for the following day, Wednesday, with a specialist at the University of Iowa hospitals. Eve drove Leman to his appointment in Iowa City on Wednesday where they did an MRI and confirmed he had a lesion on his brain. They admitted him to the hospital and scheduled surgery for today, Thursday, November 9th.
The doctors came around at about 10:30 to take Leman for one last MRI before surgery. They told Leman and Eve that the lesion was pressing on Leman's brain stem which was causing the headaches and a few other symptoms. Since the lesion was so close to the brain stem, they said they would likely not be able to remove the entire lesion. The plan was to get as much as they could, send it to pathology and then go from there. The surgery was to start immediately after the last MRI and was scheduled to last 5 hours, depending on how things went when they got in there. They expect that Leman will be staying several days in the hospital and told Eve to expect a significant amount of swelling following the surgery. The swelling could affect speech, vision and other things on the right side of his body. After they see how things go during surgery, they will be able to give a better idea of what the plan is from there.
When I spoke with Eve, we decided this site was the best way to keep people informed. Eve will update it as she finds out more, or she will let me know and I will update it. You can set up your account to send you notifications when an update has been made. Please feel free to leave some encouraging words as I know those are always a bright spot during a difficult time. Also keep Leman, Eve, Mason and Simon in your prayers as this is difficult for all of them!
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