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