Hubby Update -- Long Again

 
 
   Sometimes I think we are getting some of this mess figured out then something changes and we are all puzzled and just trying to cope with the moment.
     Got into the neurologist and he could see the big change in hubby's health. Of course sitting in the room in a wheel chair was clue one. Basically he said hubby is extremely medication sensitive. It don't take much to do something good or bad with him. At this point with the Parkinson's he called the Parkinson's specialist to get him in a quickly as possible to see if he is eligible for the surgery that runs something like a hot wire to the part of the brain that is supposed to help give a more steady dopamine supply to his body. Kind of like a pace maker.
    Then he also is going to call the surgeon for his back surgery to see if that can been done a lot quicker than the Sept date they had planned.
  He helped to fine tune the Ativan so that we can just not take the BP meds. We had adjusted the BP meds by totally doing away with one of them but that wasn't enough. So we are trying to not take Coreg he was on that mainly controlled the pulse rate and was a slight diuretic. So far everything is working and he isn't having is BP drop down to 90 / 50 . The pulse rate is still high but so far he can live with that.For a few days there everything I tried was still letting his BP get down to staggering and almost fainting low. I was taking his BP constantly and loading him up on Pepsi for the caffeine and pretzels for the salt. I could get it up for maybe a hour decent but it would start to go back down again and I would have to pour the caffeine back in him.
    I know people say why didn't you go to the doctor? WE DID! It's just what they said was not working for him and I had to do the best I could to just monitor 24 hrs a day and keep notes and try this and that. I wasn't about to have another man in my life go to sleep and not wake up if I could help it. I was once again in the watch him and see if I can see his chest or stomach move like I did for so many years after Jon died in his sleep. It was too the point of when it was time to take meds, which with him is every 4 hours, I had to take his BP to determine what medicine to do or not to do. Neither one of us got much sleep. He did all kinds of sleep with Ativan. Me I just slept when I thought his BP wasn't to low. When you have been through some of the things I have with folks you learn to just do the best you can. All it takes is someone being overwhelmed with exhaustion and fall asleep and wake up to find the person your caring for isn't going to wake up again from in this case his heart just not pumping due to meds. Sometimes no matter what you do and how careful a person is it just doesn't work.
     Something I am going to try and do is get everything a person may need available in the house. From wheel chairs to shower chairs or whatever. Mostly because we are both getting to the age where these could be needful things.
     Other than the age factor..... given our current political climate with shut downs and rampant illness of all kinds this just smart for anyone to do. When I go the the ER and ask them to put him in a room a few days to get him stabilize and we are told the hospital is full and no longer has rooms. The ER was totally full and they were waiting on people to get out of rooms to be able to let someone else in to be helped. We have a home health nurse coming in and she said she has a hospital / ER room set up in her house also. I talked to my daughter in Arkansas and they are telling her if you need a hospital room they will send you to New Mexico ! How is hubby going to get surgery if rooms are scarce? I guess if it makes them money they make room? We will see.
     Soooo........ Our own version of ER / Medical room is on it's way. Believe me you don't want to be in the ER ! You wait hours and hours and are exposed to all kinds of things. We saw people in tears and having to stand or sit differently every few minutes and the nurses could actually ignore that! I don't know how they do it. The poor woman was crying for a couple of hours. Finally a lady was called in and she let the crying lady go in her place so she could get some help.
    For those that think it's wise to prepare for future issues I can honestly say medical help for anything minor or serious is a problem. Get whatever you may need from minor boo boo's to colds or whatever your family has problems with and get organized to have it easily available when needed.
   Maybe in this case I didn't know exactly how to fix my hubby but I for sure had a BP cuff and a O2 monitor, caffeine and salt to deal with it the best I could. I also had a chart set up to take notes and write things down for not just me but to take to the doctor to show them. If I can ever get where I can get some sleep and think straight I am going to try to find some Red Cross type videos to watch and learn some more.

Love
Tired Ranchmama





   

ER Visits -- WARNING LONG ---

 
    

 It has been pure!!@#$ since about April 1st 2021 around here. We have had 3 ER visits in the last week and several starting way back in April. Hubby has Parkinson's. Now he has been diagnosed with sciatica in the left leg. Cat scans an all that stuff say several bulging discs and pinch nerve stuff etc. He has had 2 nerve block procedures this month 2 weeks apart. They helped but didn't do the job. So now they are referring him to a surgeon in OKC in Sept! Some people say that is soon but when your this messed up nothing is soon enough.
    At first he hurt so bad he couldn't get comfortable anywhere on any surface. Pillows blankets stuffed here and there nothing. Laying down was ify most times. Lay this way or that way with pillows here and there etc. Sometimes the pain was so bad he couldn't get up without me standing in front of him holding broth hands and pulling him up. Then once he got standing he couldn't stand on his own without feeling like he was going to fall. Canes and walking stick helps but after a while not even that worked.
   Drs. and ER prescribed gabapentin, and norco another time along with the normal ice etc. Gabapentin  just didn't work hardly at all. Norco worked more but then your dealing with the bathroom going on strike. Still neither did enough to help.
    After a while this all wears on a person no matter your age, how tough you are or anything. He lost 15 lbs.! For a 6'2'' normally 200# guy that is a lot. With the meds and pain he just couldn't eat. I asked him what do you want to eat? Anything you want I will fix it. He couldn't even eat half the food no matter what it was. On one of those ER trips to town when he was in better shape coming home I pointed out places to eat asking him if anything looked good so he could have something he liked. Just nothing was working.
    This weeks 3 trips to the ER was at first about the pain last Friday. He was feeling good and said lets see if I can sit in the truck without passing out from pain and go to the nearest small to to Mc.D's. We barely made it there and out the drive though and he said lets go to that towns ER. That doctor was better in lot of ways in explaining the exact problem. With the scan he could see it was a nerve damage that surgery might fix but the pain until then he's going to have to find a way to live with some of it.
    A week later we are back in the ER in Shawnee, Ok this time. We waited over 3 hours with him in a wheel chair to get in that morning. All kinds of people in there. One lady was in tears with what looked like sciatica. She said when she came in she had sclerosis of the liver so who knows. Several older people came in with low blood pressure. The others who knows. Hubby finally got in and they thought it might be a problem with getting off the gabapentin he was on for 5 days then stopped but it shouldn't have been causing his muscles to freeze up like this. Hubby was to the point he couldn't function. Paralyzed to the point every muscle was just frozen and he couldn't move. He needed help with everything.Getting dressed, up and down, like I had been doing for weeks but this was worse. They gave him a shot of Toradal that helped a lot but only enough to get him home. They also gave him some Tylenol 3 saying the other stuff he had was not good for the pains he had. We honestly didn't take it because the pain was better and he already takes a very low dose of Ativan so didn't want to have a case of forgetting to wake up like Jon had.
    Saturday night he is still freezing up unable to do anything even open a door or shut a door. He took his normal bp meds and it sent him into some kind of seizure or something. He was shaking and tremoring for hours afterwards. He was unable to sit up strait or move to get comfortable in a chair. He couldn't stand on his own when I helped him up. He couldn't think to move when I told him to move a foot or hand.  Canes and walking sticks were useless. He was scared to death to take his Parkinsons meds afraid it would do something worse than paralyze like the BP meds did.  He managed to get into the truck and I took him to the ER about 8 pm once again in Shawnee. It was packed! Two cars pulled in behind me as I was unloading hubby. That trip was only maybe a hour long wait. The waiting area was packed with all kinds of people I don't know what their problems were. We still didn't get home till after 11p. While there it took one person on each side of him holding him up to stand. His bp 189/90 or so when we went in. When they got him back in the room finally did hooked him up and did all the normal and gave him a shot of Ativan. Told him to take his Parkinsons meds and they would make sure he was ok. He went to sleep and BP went down some. They checked on him and said just let him sleep a bit.
     We asked if Hubby could just be admitted to get his meds straightened out and they said they had no hospital beds available. Everything was full. The ER was having people wait  because every room was in use there also.
   So getting him home was not much easier after they let him out of ER. Still took 2 people to get him into the Crew Cab Truck. We made it home and he could wobble in using his cane. It was still a huge effort. He was off his med schedule so didn't know when to take what since they gave him the Ativan boost. We figured it out and now he just has to take more ativan 6 times a day.
     The pain was causing problems but also the stress from the pain and having to have someone help you with the simplest of daily things was just pushing his nerves past his limit. So all Hail ATIVAN!!! Glory be to the ATIVAN GOD ! LOL
     After finally getting some sleep for both of us and him taking 2 rounds of the new ativan dose he can walk and do things on his own mostly. The big problem now is we have to adjust his BP meds because the Ativan is knocking it down low to the point he's going to wind up face down on the floor. So caffeine pepsi and other things are going to help us out on that until we can get that adjusted better around here.
    Well if you stuck it out this long wait till you see the next post about ER's!
    Hope everyone is able to stay away from the ER's.

Love
Ranchmama