Saturday, June 12, 2004
Blood out, blood in
Jumping right to the end, on June 9, 2004, over several hours commencing at about 0200, my mother received a blood transfusion of three units in an attempt to bring what had advanced to severe iron deficiency anemia under control and reverse it. Medical science's experience is that this often works. In my mother's case it is certainly beginning to work. It will be necessary for me to cover the entire experience, factually and impressionistically, over a series of posts because she is awake much more of the time now, thank the gods and our species' peculiar habit of, generally, not waiting for divine intervention to solve problems. She is becoming more aware (with reservations, not sure if this is temporary), becoming more active (with temporary reservations; she's battling a case of hospital contracted bronchitis at the moment and the antibiotic tends to make her woozy) and certainly appears more robust than I've seen her since sometime in 2002. I have about 15 minutes before I awaken her. She's already roused herself once this morning but looked at the clock, noticed it was just past 0600 and decided that was an ungodly hour to arise (sick or well, she's never been a morning person). I agreed to give her until 8:30.
The specifics are thus: On our way down the mountain to her appointment she vomited up her breakfast three hours after consuming it, as she had her dinner the night before after retiring and, as well, her dinner the night before that. Her feet were back to what I considered normal. We arrived early for our 1400 appointment with her PCP in Mesa. She was very weak but very determined. She wanted to walk into her appointment but I overruled her despite her griping. Her systolic blood pressure was above 110 (can't remember the exact number). Her diastolic was in the 50's. Although I was concerned, both her nurse and doctor pointed out that readings in these areas have been normal for her for at least the past four years. Blood was drawn for a CBC, CMP, Iron & TIBC and Thyroid Analysis. I presented her physician with list of her blood glucose readings from early April and the last 20 of her blood pressure readings (having found out, to my disappointment, the day before, that the wrist BP monitor I use only records the most recent 20 readings) and reviewed how I'd been handling her and what my concerns were about her most recent health problems including her temporary feet swelling, her extreme fatigue, her vomiting and her blood pressure drops below Systolic 100 and Diastolic 60.
Ah, reconnaissance coughing, right on time. I'll continue...
...later.
The specifics are thus: On our way down the mountain to her appointment she vomited up her breakfast three hours after consuming it, as she had her dinner the night before after retiring and, as well, her dinner the night before that. Her feet were back to what I considered normal. We arrived early for our 1400 appointment with her PCP in Mesa. She was very weak but very determined. She wanted to walk into her appointment but I overruled her despite her griping. Her systolic blood pressure was above 110 (can't remember the exact number). Her diastolic was in the 50's. Although I was concerned, both her nurse and doctor pointed out that readings in these areas have been normal for her for at least the past four years. Blood was drawn for a CBC, CMP, Iron & TIBC and Thyroid Analysis. I presented her physician with list of her blood glucose readings from early April and the last 20 of her blood pressure readings (having found out, to my disappointment, the day before, that the wrist BP monitor I use only records the most recent 20 readings) and reviewed how I'd been handling her and what my concerns were about her most recent health problems including her temporary feet swelling, her extreme fatigue, her vomiting and her blood pressure drops below Systolic 100 and Diastolic 60.
Ah, reconnaissance coughing, right on time. I'll continue...
...later.
