Thursday, February 19, 2004
I may enter a few posts, tonight, depending on my train of thought.
There's much I want to mention, separate events, separate realizations, yet entwined at the moment like finely forged chains of gold thrown in the corner for storage. To begin, I'm feeling very good this evening. I have felt consistently good and hopeful for the past three days, including the day we went to Mesa. Despite the results of her blood test or, perhaps, because of those results and a few other events I feel capable and trustworthy in directing my mother's health care. There are a few steps I took that I will not repeat but I knew the risks were low and quickly discoverable if activated.
So. I received a copy of my mother's 2/10/04 Blood/Urine test results in the office about 15 minutes prior to my mother's appointment. In my purse I had a copy of her 1/12/04 results. They were almost identical except that her BUN had moved 3 points into the normal range. I took this to mean that her body, although continuing to be anemic, was optimistic about reversal and could probably use some help. Once she began having regular bowel movements I cut back severely on the iron. It was also about this time that I began cutting back quickly on the ibuprofen. Within days of tolerating reduced doses further apart she was taking none and not realizing it. I wanted to allow any irritated intestinal linings a healing environment and do so while seeing to it that the healing process did not have to battle a systemic problem like constipation. These were my primary reasons for medicating and not medicating her as I did between 1/12/04 and 2/10/04. I was, of course, curious to see if her body was going to begin self-correcting its anemia as her stomach lining healed. Stomach linings heal surprisingly fast considering that they are almost constantly in use even when not digesting food, but relatively speaking it is a slow process. I made sure she had plenty of capaisin (sp? will check latter) containing foods; so-called "hot" foods. Dried medium to hot ground peppers. Szechuan seasoning in just about everything. Lots of garlic to bolster her immune system. Lots of ginger, just because it tastes good. These foods promote healing of the intestinal lining and my mother has a taste for hot, which is lucky in this case.
The day of the blood draw for the last series of tests she also had an acupuncture appointment in which I asked the acupunturist to address my mother's anemia if possible. Whether or not she did I don't know but she was the one who told me about Floradix. She is the third person in the healing professions who has shaken her/his head over elemental iron from ferrous sulfate. The other two were M.D. physicians, yet she's the only one who had a solution which is working despite the dose of elemental iron from ferrous gluconate being only 4% of what Mom was prescribed of the ferrous sulfate when her anemia was at it's worst a year ago last fall, then again in the late winter.
At any rate, after discussing my mother's blood test results with MCS, listening to what she had to say about various readings, I said, "Okay, then, I'm going to tell you in laymen's terms what it sounds like to me and you tell me if my description is accurate," or something close to that.
She agreed.
"My sense is that Mom's body was, on the 10th, still anemic but attempting to reverse this condition despite the apparent lack of outside support [i.e., iron supplementation, etc., although I had removed the ibuprofen and later, around 2/10, temporarily her baby aspirin in the morning just to be sure all irritants that could be eliminated were]. It also seems that her body feels confident of its ability to reverse this and with a little outside help it'll chug right along. I'm especially heartened by the normalization of her BUN. Her immune system is working well, too, recognizes something is off and is alerting the media. So. Does my description sound reasonably realistic?"
She said something like, "That's how I see it," or some other supportive, confirmational statement.
"So. No endoscopy. Not at this time. No reason to do it."
"No."
I was also confident in determining that her anemia is not affecting her other systems at this time and probably won't, for a while, anyway. Well functioning bowels keep her nice and clean as well and her blood sugar automatically becomes easier to manage. Good kidneys and good blood are interlinked in an amazing catch-22 relationship so, when one is looking better, even miniscule changes in the other bode well. This is how I understand it.
I'm still trying to figure out what allegorical reference her anemia, specifically iron deficiency anemia, is making to her soul and her life. I may be too close to her to make this determination. Lisa Alther. Kinflicks. Got to read that passage again.
Tonight Mom and I discussed the problem of pain and her ability to become anemic at a moment's notice. "I don't know, Mom," I said. "Maybe we're going to have to revert to the opiates." Although those are also constipating. Is there any analgesic that isn't constipating and doesn't have some other potentially unhealthy side effect, like irritating the digestive lining, as well?
I believe my mother applies a sort of bio-feedback on herself in regards to pain, but this time it didn't work. Sometimes I could see her struggling to figure out how to connect to her back in order to subdue the pain but it was as though she didn't have any frame of reference for back pain and neither did I so, at least for the first two months, she was often wild-eyed with pain even with the ibuprofen. She bore it well. I bore it less well.
Pain is at only only an annoyance level now. Her level of alertness is steadier. Her physical strength continues to wax and wane dramatically but I'm not fearful of allowing her to sleep when she feels like it, as, if it is during the day or evening, she typically awakens within and hour to an hour and a half.
I have more to mention, not the least of which are steak and cinnamon but I'm tired, I've got to get some sleep.
Later.
So. I received a copy of my mother's 2/10/04 Blood/Urine test results in the office about 15 minutes prior to my mother's appointment. In my purse I had a copy of her 1/12/04 results. They were almost identical except that her BUN had moved 3 points into the normal range. I took this to mean that her body, although continuing to be anemic, was optimistic about reversal and could probably use some help. Once she began having regular bowel movements I cut back severely on the iron. It was also about this time that I began cutting back quickly on the ibuprofen. Within days of tolerating reduced doses further apart she was taking none and not realizing it. I wanted to allow any irritated intestinal linings a healing environment and do so while seeing to it that the healing process did not have to battle a systemic problem like constipation. These were my primary reasons for medicating and not medicating her as I did between 1/12/04 and 2/10/04. I was, of course, curious to see if her body was going to begin self-correcting its anemia as her stomach lining healed. Stomach linings heal surprisingly fast considering that they are almost constantly in use even when not digesting food, but relatively speaking it is a slow process. I made sure she had plenty of capaisin (sp? will check latter) containing foods; so-called "hot" foods. Dried medium to hot ground peppers. Szechuan seasoning in just about everything. Lots of garlic to bolster her immune system. Lots of ginger, just because it tastes good. These foods promote healing of the intestinal lining and my mother has a taste for hot, which is lucky in this case.
The day of the blood draw for the last series of tests she also had an acupuncture appointment in which I asked the acupunturist to address my mother's anemia if possible. Whether or not she did I don't know but she was the one who told me about Floradix. She is the third person in the healing professions who has shaken her/his head over elemental iron from ferrous sulfate. The other two were M.D. physicians, yet she's the only one who had a solution which is working despite the dose of elemental iron from ferrous gluconate being only 4% of what Mom was prescribed of the ferrous sulfate when her anemia was at it's worst a year ago last fall, then again in the late winter.
At any rate, after discussing my mother's blood test results with MCS, listening to what she had to say about various readings, I said, "Okay, then, I'm going to tell you in laymen's terms what it sounds like to me and you tell me if my description is accurate," or something close to that.
She agreed.
"My sense is that Mom's body was, on the 10th, still anemic but attempting to reverse this condition despite the apparent lack of outside support [i.e., iron supplementation, etc., although I had removed the ibuprofen and later, around 2/10, temporarily her baby aspirin in the morning just to be sure all irritants that could be eliminated were]. It also seems that her body feels confident of its ability to reverse this and with a little outside help it'll chug right along. I'm especially heartened by the normalization of her BUN. Her immune system is working well, too, recognizes something is off and is alerting the media. So. Does my description sound reasonably realistic?"
She said something like, "That's how I see it," or some other supportive, confirmational statement.
"So. No endoscopy. Not at this time. No reason to do it."
"No."
I was also confident in determining that her anemia is not affecting her other systems at this time and probably won't, for a while, anyway. Well functioning bowels keep her nice and clean as well and her blood sugar automatically becomes easier to manage. Good kidneys and good blood are interlinked in an amazing catch-22 relationship so, when one is looking better, even miniscule changes in the other bode well. This is how I understand it.
I'm still trying to figure out what allegorical reference her anemia, specifically iron deficiency anemia, is making to her soul and her life. I may be too close to her to make this determination. Lisa Alther. Kinflicks. Got to read that passage again.
Tonight Mom and I discussed the problem of pain and her ability to become anemic at a moment's notice. "I don't know, Mom," I said. "Maybe we're going to have to revert to the opiates." Although those are also constipating. Is there any analgesic that isn't constipating and doesn't have some other potentially unhealthy side effect, like irritating the digestive lining, as well?
I believe my mother applies a sort of bio-feedback on herself in regards to pain, but this time it didn't work. Sometimes I could see her struggling to figure out how to connect to her back in order to subdue the pain but it was as though she didn't have any frame of reference for back pain and neither did I so, at least for the first two months, she was often wild-eyed with pain even with the ibuprofen. She bore it well. I bore it less well.
Pain is at only only an annoyance level now. Her level of alertness is steadier. Her physical strength continues to wax and wane dramatically but I'm not fearful of allowing her to sleep when she feels like it, as, if it is during the day or evening, she typically awakens within and hour to an hour and a half.
I have more to mention, not the least of which are steak and cinnamon but I'm tired, I've got to get some sleep.
Later.
