I had gotten to Lancaster sometime after 10:00 Tuesday night, so I didn't even try to go to the hospital until the following morning. Rather high-handedly, I told Daddy I wasn't going to take him to visit until Mother had been put in a regular hospital room, since there's nowhere to sit in the emergency room. I left him home with Cheyenne and instructions to rest.
Mother was in better shape than I expected, although I knew she wasn't going to be running marathons any time soon, or even getting out of bed. Apparently the new vasodilator had caused her syncope (pronounced SYN-co-pee; I'd never actually heard someone say it before), so they weren't going to give her that anymore. Two different doctors advised her to dispose of "the evil pills" as soon as she got home.
While keeping Mother company in the emergency room, I
got a phone call from my dad. Since there are no phones in the patient cubicles (you can't call them rooms), I had to go to the nurse's station. Antelope Valley Hospital has the second-busiest emergency room in L A County, and the halls and walkways were lined with gurneys. When I took my call, I had to hold the cord carefully out of the way of a phlebotomist who was working on a patient right next to the phone.
Daddy has a Carelink kit so he can interrogate his defibrillator and then transmit the data on a phone line to his cardiologist in Redwood City. He routinely does this on a monthly schedule, but because his defibrillator had fired Tuesday evening, he sent off a report Wednesday morning. The cardiologist's office had responded that the intervention was appropriate, but the cardiologist also wanted a blood test. There are a couple of enzymes that could trigger such an episode. Since Daddy still wasn't feeling safe to drive, he asked if I'd take him to the lab, which I did. The blood test results came back within normal ranges.
By the time I got him back home, Charlotte and Catherine (an added bonus) had gotten to the hospital, so I went up to relieve them. They had just driven down from Stockton, so I was sure they were tired. For a few minutes, we were all there at the same time, and Catherine had to wait in the waiting room so I could come in. The emergency room limits visitors to two, and a nurse told my mother that if she was ever allowed all the visitors she wanted, that was a baaaad sign.
Mother got moved to a regular hospital room while the rest of us were out at dinner. For a brief period before moving, she had an interesting roommate in the emergency room: a prison inmate, complete with a couple of correctional officers. He - yes, he - was manacled to his bed. When I brought Daddy by on the way back from dinner for a brief visit, we didn't know Mother had been moved. Although we had to go through a metal detector at the entrance and check in at the desk (a practice instituted a couple of weeks before after a gang battle broke out in the emergency room), they just waved us on in. We were somewhat taken aback by the officers and the guy in the orange jumpsuit, but I peeked behind the curtain where Mother had been, and there was a strange man in the bed. Rather embarrassing. So I explained to the room at large that my mother had been there when I had left a couple of hours before, and one of the officers told me she had been moved upstairs.
Her room wasn't quite as nice this time, but it wasn't bad, either. She stayed until Friday, when she got a new walker and instructions to use it. I had been concerned about her physical condition, so I called her primary care doctor (who had gotten back from his vacation on Wednesday) to ask about getting some kind of physical rehabilitation for her. I actually had in mind something like the rehab program at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, which is more like an indoor camp with an emphasis on physical rehabilitation than like a hospital, but apparently they don't have those for adults. Just hospitals and care facilities (nursing homes). The doctor offered in-home physical therapy, which seemed like the best option under the circumstances.
After we got Mother home and in bed, Charlotte, Catherine and I went to Carrow's for supper, followed by a trip to Ralphs grocery. We picked up strawberries, frozen Belgian waffles, tofu ice-cream sandwiches and a variety of other items to tempt Mother's appetite within the restrictions of a lactose-free, low-fat, low-sodium, reduced-sugar diet. She has lost weight much too quickly in the past several months, which I suspect may have contributed to some of her recent health problems.
It was after nine o'clock by the time we got back to the house, where we found Mother in great discomfort. She wasn't sure what to do at first, but she eventually asked me to call her doctor's exchange. Based on her description of her symptoms, I figured the urinary tract infection she had been battling when she went into the hospital had returned, and the doctor on call prescribed accordingly. Charlotte and I went to the 24-hour Sav-on Pharmacy where he had called in the prescription and passed the half-hour wait rumaging through their clearance bins. We got back to the house around 11:00 with the prescription. I explained the pharmacist's instructions: take one in the morning and one in the evening, and drink lots of water.
Charlotte and I went gratefully to bed. Now, during my first stay, I had slept in the forward double bed in the trailer and had wakened every day feeling like Rigoletto's daughter (that is, stuffed in a sack and beaten). So on Wednesday, I had gone to Linens 'n' Things and bought a couple of Aerobeds, a double for the front bed and a twin for the side bed. They fit beautifully and slept much better than the original cushions. Catherine and Charlotte shared the front bed, while I had the side bed to myself, which was a pretty comfortable arrangement (once I got sufficient insulation between me and the air chamber below, at any rate).
Our night was cut short by a call on Charlotte's phone at about six Saturday morning. Feeling guilty, I let her go and snuggled back into bed, but it wasn't too long before Catherine also had a call. Apparently we were all needed in the house.
Mother was ill, but we were able to piece together what may have happened. Apparently she woke up early that morning and took another of the new pills. Since she had taken the first not that long before, she probably experienced a mild overdose. She was also concerned about a particular one of the side-effects: muscle soreness. Her calves hurt. Fortunately, Catherine recalled that she had first mentioned sore calves while Charlotte and I were out getting the prescription. We decided that Mother should simply refrain from taking another pill that morning, take the next at dinner and see what happened.
From that point, Mother has continued to get generally better, although she has suffered some setbacks - lightheadedness, internal cramping and a sore left arm. Her headaches are generally much improved, however. Her cardiologist cut in half her dose of the medication she had suspected of giving her the headaches, and she has not had one of the horrible, crushing variety since she left the hospital the first time.
Apparently Sam was much smaller than Martha. Someone who knew them told my Great-Aunt Lucille that when the couple rode in a carriage together, it tipped toward Martha's side.
Today after going to the gym, Evan and I went to Valencia to the Gibbon Conservation Center. He will get extra credit for his anthropology class, and I got an interesting tour. I hope we can go to the San Diego Museum of Man next weekend to see Footsteps Through Time: Four Million Years of Human Evolution. Glen has a Furry convention, so the rest of us can do other stuff while he stays at the convention hotel. Busy, busy, busy.
This is Minyak, a male Borneo Orangutan at the Los Angeles Zoo. I've been visiting him, his harem, et al. about once a week for the past several weeks as part of an anthropology project. This is not my project, mind you, but my sons'. They are both taking a physical anthropology class to fulfill their lab requirement for associate degrees.