Doctors can really piss you off sometimes.
This morning (Saturday) my wife woke up feeling great. Had her usual insomnia, but nothing serious. I took care of the livestock (the dogs). Made sure they had food and water. Made sure they went outside to do their business. Washed out Harry's eye he gets crudites on them) and put anti-biotic drops in them. Gave them all their piece of Hot Dog for being good dogs and just because they're spoiled. All was right with the world (here anyway).
I watched TV, the earlier returns from the caucus and primary states and played with the dogs and rearranged the crushed rocks around some new plants I had planted the other day outside. All good. When I was done I took my cup of coffee into my wife's bedroom to talk politics with her. We talked for maybe 10 minutes and she decided she had to get up to pee. She started to try to get up and I could see it was a real struggle. She twisted herself around and pushed against the bed-stand and night tables, trying and trying to get herself in a position where she could stand up out of bed. I asked if she need help, but she said no, but continued to struggle. It was obvious that she was suddenly very, very weak. I went over to her and told her that I would hold her hands and help her, but as soon as I did she cried out in pain that my grip hurt.
I told her to hold on to my hands and arms instead and I would pull her up. Her grip on my arms was to weak to hold onto me and she was slipping down the side of the bed, so I put my arms under hers and lowered her as gently as I could to the floor. At this point this whole thing had gone on for a good 15 or more minutes. I told her I was going to call 911, but she got angry and said if I could just help her to her feet she'd be fine. Well I did everything I could. I am not a strong enough man to lift her by myself and she kept saying it hurt. I got a small one step folding ladder and said she could use it to base herself while she pulled on me to get up. Then I notice a pool of urine spreading out from under where she was sitting on the floor.
I asked her about it and she told me she peed herself. I told her again I was going to call 911. She was going to start to object, but when she tried to say something she vomited all over the front of herself instead. She was a mess. Sitting on the floor in a pool of urine, vomit running down her front and too weak to move at all. At that point I told her I was calling 911 no matter how mad she got. She HATES hospitals and DOCTORS to the point of being stupid about it. A pillow had fallen down on the floor during the attempt to get her up and she just laid down with her head on the side of it curled up in her nightie in her pool of urine and vomit and crying because she said she was going to feel so embarrassed. But there was nothing I could do to help her. I had been an EMT for two years in Sun City Arizona and had seen several ladies in her position.
Well the fire department and ambulance were there in less then ten minutes and I could hear their sirens from far off. In the meantime I was trying to calm her, get dressed and confine the dogs to a closed room. I also had to remember to load up her insurance info, drivers license, etc. for the trip to the hospital. That's when the trouble started. She refused to go with them! She said she'd be fine, but they took her BP and it was 202 over 110! Her temp was 102 degrees and her skin was dry and chilly! She finally, after a lot of talk made a deal with the firefighter that she would go if they helped her to her feet and couldn't stand on her own. Two firefighters picked her up and it was obvious that if they let her go she crumple to the floor again, so I told her she was going or I'd call the Sheriff and have her put on a 5150 as a danger to herself and the firefighters and Medics said the same so she finally agreed to go.They told her that the hospital would probably just check her out and she'd probably be home again this evening.
They took her to Eisenhower Medical Center (which is the best hospital in the valley) and right into the ER. It took several hours to run lots of tests and all the could come up with is that she has an infection somewhere in her body and it just hasn't shown itself yet! Her BP stayed up around 180 over 100 and her temp stayed up around 102+ degrees. They admitted her to hospital and said it might take a few days for the infection to show itself and then they could treat it! To show itself?! It's an infection! It doesn't matter where it is or what it is, start the antibiotics!
I understand that Doctors are human and are just people who took different courses in college to pursue a different path then others. They can't always be right or be sure of what they are dealing with and this doctor seems like a highly trained and smart man who knows what he is talking about. But an infection somewhere in her body that hasn't shown itself yet, so they can't treat it?! The woman has a 102+ temperature! Her BP is up around 180 over 100! And he's reassuring me that the infection that is "somewhere" in her will show itself so they can treat it! Though I will admit that it's little short of a miracle that our HMO insisted that she be admitted and they'd pick up the cost considering Eisenhower is also far and away the most expensive hospital in the valley.
Well that's how I left her. She told me to go home, have something to eat and get some sleep. I don't know how. I stay up late (2am) as a rule anyway and the fact that I'm all wound up about my wife is making sleep impossible. I know there is nothing I can do, so I just sit here worrying. I mean what happens if the infection "shows itself" and it's in an area or too late to treat it?
I am not prepared to be a widower. I am not prepared to accept my wife's death. I know she is much older then me at 72, so she will probably go first, but she has been my rock and I don't know what I'd do without her. I mean not just because I love her, but because she runs everything. The bills the payments, everything. I need her in many ways. And I can't handle the details IF it's something bad that takes her away! I'm really, really worried. I'm just not ready in so many ways! How does one prepare for losing a spouse?
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She is weak and tired and in the hospital at 72 years old and I knew when I married her she was much older then me, but it didn't mean anything then. Now it's starting to. And even if this turns out to be something easy to fix, I'm not sure if I can deal with it when it's not.
You have my heartfelt empathy. You did the right thing. I hope she rebounds quickly.
Thanks for the well wishes. You sort of get used to someone always being strong (though she has slowed down a lot lately) for so long that when you're trying to comfort her while waiting for the fire department to get there it really throws you for a loop. I know many here have probably been through it with their spouse, but it's a first for me. The idea of her maybe not being there terrifies me.
Randy, I'm very sorry to hear what happened to your wife. I'm familiar with Eisenhower, my aunt was there and it's a first class hospital.
Get some rest if your can, then check in with the hospital this morning. Hopefully the infection will have shown itself, and they can begin to treat her.
Also notify her GP and any other specialist that she has.
Kavika.
Thanks for your comments about my wife. You're right. Eisenhower is an excellent hospital. When the Medics told me we were about an equal distance from Eisenhower and JFK, which is not nearly as good of a hospital as I understand (I have never been there) and I had a choice, I hesitated. I didn't ask for Eisenhower at first because our HMO doesn't like to admit people there because they are more expensive and the truth is Eisenhower is not generally known as an HMO friendly hospital. But I picked it because I fully expected them to, if they were going to transfer her because of the HMO, that they would transfer her to Desert Regional in Palm Springs which is a smaller, but also excellent hospital. That's the hospital of choice in the valley of our Medicare plus HMO (UnitedHealthCare) when it comes to inpatient care, so I wasn't surprised that they were going to admit her, but I was shocked when they didn't say they were going to send her to Desert Regional. It's sad and even inexcusable in America today when you have to do such mental gymnastics to try to decide what hospital to have a loved one sent to because you expect them to ship them to a better choice of hospital then the one that was one of the choices (JFK) in the first place. The first choice should always be a good hospital!
I went there first thing this morning and even though they still haven't isolated what the infection is or where, they are trying a couple of different antibiotics at the sametime and the infection (wherever and whatever the damned thing is) is coming under control because her fever (which spiked up to almost 104 overnight) has come down. It's still high or was this morning (101), but that's much better. Her BP is still way too high at 190 over 92, but part of the that is from them having to have her on an IV fluid replacement all night and morning to keep her from becoming dehydrated. As a rule you don't want to push fluids to a high BP case. Like the doctor said, it's a balancing game of treating one problem, even though it risks exacerbating another. As much as she wanted to come home today it was out of the question. With her BP that high the doctor said there was no question she'll be there until at least tomorrow and most likely longer. Besides she's still too weak and quite frankly I'm not equipped to deal with being her care giver because I'm not physically strong enough without danger. I can't help her to the toilet or bath or anything like that.
The really frustrating part is that they still do not have an answer as to why she was perfectly fine in the morning yesterday, but completely helpless, lying on the floor in her own urine and vomit in the early afternoon. That they don't have a word, a name that they can put on what happened. It's not the flu, it's not pneumonia, it's not a stroke (according to the CAT scan), it's not her heart, it's not diabetes. All of the standard tests came back as negative and it came on all of a sudden. She felt fine right up until it happened. All the doctor could tell me was the same thing, some unidentified infection that they couldn't find. I almost rather they told me it WAS a stroke or heart condition or diabetes or something I can understand. Still right now (when I left this afternoon), since the fever has gone down they're going to start treating the high BP more aggressively and see what happens. They know they can bring it down, but there is a slight chance that it may allow the fever to come back.
I know it sounds rather pathetic on my part to be so worried or to be making such a big thing out of this, but in the 23 years I've known her she has only had one minor case of kidney stones and a mild cold or two. That's it. Never ever been sick in any way before. However she refuses to go to the doctor for any reason. Not for a physical. Not for routine tests a woman of her age should have such as a breast exam (let alone a mammography), PAP smear, regular blood tests or anything else, so when she was suddenly helpless like that for the first time since I've known her a hundred different things went through my head. That plus having just lost my mother on New Years Eve and my Aunt two weeks later I was terrified I was going to lose her too. I was/am hyper-sensitive and probably waaaaay too much so.
Still she feels a lot better today, she is getting great care (like everyone is ENTITLED TOO!) and they are still doing some more tests today. She does want to come home, but I want her to stay until they find out definitively what caused the problem in the first place. I don't want to go through this again.
Again, thank you Kavika for your concern and hopefully she'll be be even better tomorrow morning and I hope that at least the doctor has something she can tell us/me about what the underlying problem is and what we can do about it. Thanks again.
BTW, I got about 1 hour sleep last night, but will sleep more tonight. I promised her I would.
Randy, it's a good sign that she has improved, and hopefully by tomorrow she's be improving and they will have a better idea what the infection is.
Hang in there, Randy. You are doing everything you can.
Thank you. It's just so frustrating because I want a diagnosis, a name for what happened. I just need to give them time to work and come up with it.
But I might go back to chewing my fingernails. lol.
Deep breaths.
And Mozart...
This is a time to lean on friends, Randy.
If you just feel the need to talk to someone … send me a phone number via NT Private Notes and the best time(s) to call (Pacific Time/Eastern Standard Time).
I'll just listen for as much time as you need.
Thanks Mac. I may take you up on that.
Randy,
The same thing happened to both my mom and my Aunt Jenny about 9 months ago and they are around the same age as your wife. It's an awful virus and it always presents with vomiting dizziness and high temps with high blood pressure. I will get in touch with you and let you know what we found out.
I would appreciate that. Really.
I know it sounds rather pathetic on my part to be so worried or to be making such a big thing out of this,
No Randy, it isn't. I understand it perfectly because I've been there. Five years ago last December I was sitting in the surgery waiting room at University of Chicago Hospital while my wife got a kidney transplant and all those same thoughts were going through my head. She got into the ICU all right and I went back to the motel. Like you, I didn't sleep much that first night. We had been married for 2/3 of our lives; what the hell was I going to do without her?
I think (hope) that this will end for you the same as it did for me. Less than two weeks later, we spent our 40th Anniversary in a motel room not far from the hospital and two weeks after that we were home. On January 2nd of this year, we celebrated our 45th Anniversary and are looking forward to number 50. You'll pull through it and so will she. One thing for sure too, you will love and appreciate her more (if more is possible) than you did before.
Better get some sleep now. Remember that you can't do anything to help her if you aren't awake and alert yourself.
I am very, very happy your wife's transplant was so successful. And my sincere congrats on your anniversary.
Just wait till I can give you congratulations on your next one. It will happen. Remember positive thoughts; they actually do make things better.
Dearest Randy - I'm so terribly sorry to hear about your wife's recent health struggles. I'm hoping that you've received good news by now and that you're planning her return home. Please be sure to take care of yourself too. Wives always worry about their husbands and family even when we're the ones who are ill. If she sees that you are not taking care of yourself it may upset her more. And.....well okay, it's just in our nature to worry. Thinking of you both and sending good wishes your way. :o)
Well they released her late this afternoon (why do I feel like that was the HMO talking? Could be because there was an HMO rep with the doctor when they did!). Her temperature is back down to normal though her BP is still higher then I would like at 150 over 98, but it's coming down. She's walking a lot slower, but is back to having a good sense of humor. The frustrating thing is that the doctor still couldn't tell us where the infection was or what caused it because they stuck her like a pin cushion, did a bunch of tests and couldn't find anything wrong other then what we already knew, she'd had a sudden spike in temperature and bad weakness, but that the aggressive antibiotics seem to have brought it under control or stopped it completely. She has to take it easy for the next few weeks and keep an eye on her temperature. But they didn't send any antibiotics home with her or prescribe any. They said that, quite frankly, they don't know what caused it and it may never reoccur or could happen again at anytime. The good part is that they did what amounts to most of a complete physical on her (blood-wise anyway) and she hadn't had one in the 23 years I've known her and they said she is in very good health for someone her age (though quite a bit overweight). It's just very frustrating that they can't account for what brought her to the ER in the first place. I said there must be some kind of diagnoses, a name for it, he could give me and he said there really wasn't.
He said that the infection had one good thing about it and that was discovering that she has a problem with very high BP and has to take Amlodipine (Norvasc) twice a day now. The other good thing is that she has a doctor's appointment at one of our HMO's urgent care clinics on Wednesday (it's faster that way) and she is actually going to go to it (which is a miracle on the order of the loves and fishes for her). She also is going to schedule a visit with our Primary Care Doctor for another appointment as a follow up, which is amazing because he's been our Primary Care for more then two years and she's only seen him once and that was because our HMO threatened to cut her off her insurance if she didn't have a physical more then a year ago, which she promptly threw all of the follow up blood work and other tests orders out when she got home from it. She likes him, but still has a pathological hatred of going to a doctor for anything. Still she now has to do regular follow ups to make sure her BP is under control, which at least gets her into seeing our doctor once in awhile. I think this whole thing may have scared her enough to realize that she not in her 20's any longer and is going to need to watch out for health problems more!
Besides I told her if she ever scares me like this again I'm going to strangle her myself rather then call an ambulance.
I understand the feeling completely. Please give her my best wishes, and that I hope she feels better soon!!!
Oh and a good thing about our Medicare HMO is that all BP meds that they approve of (which is most of the common ones) have zero co-pay. They're free. In a way that makes me angry because I think of all of the other health problems that could be avoided in people with free BP meds. They should be free to everyone who needs them.
I think that in a lot of cases, they just don't know. We are so used to having answers to things, we fail to realize that most ailments, just can't be cured. We can't cure arthritis, diabetes, or hundreds of other illnesses-- all we can really do is treat the symptoms.
It is VERY frustrating!!!
Much love to you and your dear wife. I hope she is feeling better by now, and will be back to her normal self soon!
Randy - I'm so glad to hear your Joan is doing better. Keep us updated. :o)
Randy,
A thousand apologies for not reaching out earlier, just stumbled across this tonight. Thrilled to hear your Joan is doing better and will keep you both in my thoughts [prayers too
]. May you be stuck with each other for many years to come!
May you be stuck with each other for many years to come!
Well, after 23 years I've sort of gotten used to having her around and I honestly don't know what I'd do without her. Turn into a drunken bum I suppose.
I am still determined to find out exactly what caused the weakness in the first place and if it might happen again.
Thank you for your concern.
Went to my Psychiatrist today and told him my sleep is all messed up. Bad insomnia. He adjusted some of my anxiety meds and gave me permission to blame it on my wife scaring the hell out of me. I told him that, as far as I know, worrying about her is not what is keeping me up until 5am and he said of course it is considering it started when she went to the hospital. He said people who have clinical depression (like me) are very susceptible to sleep disturbances when under stress, good or bad stress. He reminded me that I had the same problem right after my mother died, which I had forgotten about. He said it should wear off after a few weeks, unless she gets sick again. Until then take a Trazodone (antidepressant/sleeping pill) before bed and stop worrying about it. Easy for him to say!