We had to do our Christmas gift exchange on Sunday as it was the closest day that all of us had off. Obviously, mom has all the days off, but my brothers and I, our schedules were all screwed up.
Getting prepped was more than a little bit of a pain. Mainly because Mom got sick on the preceding Friday. A bad cold that had her coughing all day and practically all night. So R and I took over and made her sit quietly while we did everything.
The day itself was fine. Mom felt a little better that day (in hindsight I believe she was the same and simply lying to us), The kids really enjoyed their gifts. The adults really enjoyed theirs. Mom was ecstatic about her car starter and even more excited that it would get professionally installed the next day.
As mom was still a bit under the weather, we called it an early night. I had a visit with the Doctor the next morning. Technically it was a follow up from being prescribed the wellbutrin, but honestly it was more about the diabetes diagnosis, the elevated blood pressure, and the headaches. As I expected, he raised my dose of metformin up from 500mg once a day to 1000mg twice a day. We're on the same page in believing that I don't need to consider going on insulin yet. We also want to give the metformin a good trial before we add other oral meds, as the other meds can lower blood glucose levels too much. He does want me to take a daily blood sugar reading though, and let him know what they are in about a week.
On the headache front, he doubled the propranolol dose and added Imitrex as another option. Imitrex isn't something I take to prevent headaches, it's something I take when I get a bad one. I've never taken it before, but from everyone I know that has, it's not a great med. Yes, it does a pretty good job of stopping a migrane, but it leaves you feeling out of sorts with an upset stomach. I'll give it a try if I get a really bad one, but I hope that the propranolol will do it's job and prevent me from getting them in the first place. He also had me take a micro albumin urine test which sees how much protien is leaking out of my kidnes (diabetes can damage the kidneys, and this is a test to see just how damanged they are). Normal microalbumin results are below 30 (preferably below 20). 30 to 300 indicates early kidney damage. Over 300 is bad. My result was 45. So... I NEED to get the diabetes under control.
I worked that day so I couldn't get out to the pharmacy to pick up my new meds and glucometer, but was excited to get home and see how mom liked the remote starter. She was already asleep when I got home. The next morning she was.... well she wasn't doing well at all. The cold had either come back with a vengeance, or her lie about feeling better on Sunday caught up to her. She went in to see the doctor. While she was there, I started to worry. First, mom hates going to the doctor, so the fact that she called and got an appointment speaks volumes about just how bad she was feeling. Second, with as long as she's been feeling sick, I had to start thinking beyond 'a cold'. The flu was a possibility, as well as pneumonia. She's been vaccinated for each of those, but vaccinations aren't 100%.
When she got back, she was still in bad shape. My aunt dropped her off and went over to the pharmacy to get her prescriptions. She was prescribed a breathing treatment (a more potent version of the albuterol she was already on), prednisone and doxycycline. That right there tells me that the doctor is taking this seriously. Normally if a doc gives antibiotics for 'a cold', it will be azithromycin... a fairly good antibiotics without many side effects. Consider azithromycin the handgun of antibiotics. Doxycycline is the double barreled shotgun. Most people have gastric distress while on doxycycline as it kills most of the bacteria in your gut. It's not often given without a solid cause due to it's side effects. Being prescribed prednisone isn't a joke either as it opens up the airways and makes it easier to breath, but suppresses the immune system (not great when you are dealing with a cold!!). The doc also ordered a chest X-Ray.
Oh.. and she wanted mom to check into the hospital for a few days.
!!!!
Outside of a few bad examples, most doctors don't want you to go into the hospital. The hospital is for severely sick people. So with all these medications AND the desire for mom to go into the hospital told me that this was pretty bad. I did the only thing I could to help out... I called into work and stayed with her. I made sure she got some food in her (chicken broth), and that she rested. When the nurse called back the first time it was with fairly good news... it wasn't pneumonia. When the nurse called back the second time it was with... well not good but not bad news. It was the flu. Influenza. You always hear about how bad the flu can be. It hospitalizes many people and kills many people. At the same time, you hear about people having the flu all the time. Well, most people can get the flu and be just fine. It's the people on the outside that are in trouble. The very young and the old/infirm. Mom doesn't quite qualify on the 'old' front, but she certainly isn't young and hale. So a diagnosis of influenza is bad.
I got another sign of how seriously the doctor was taking this... she prescribed tamiflu. Tamiflu is also hard on the body. It's expensive, and it can be hard to find. By the time that call came in, R was home from work and I went to the pharmacy to get the tamiflu. I also picked up some stouffer's mac and cheese (something that mom would eat), and figured it was as good as time as any to pick up my own prescriptions. I picked up the tamiflu and food, dropped it off at home for R to start cooking, while I headed to another pharmacy to get my stuff.
Fuck. Getting my stuff took forever. It took a good 20 minutes just to get up to the counter where I found out that my doc hadn't done his job. First, he didn't prescribe a glucometer. I can buy one outright, but as a durable health product, my insurance will pick up most of the cost. It's only about $40, so I didn't mind paying that much. But where I drew the line was the test strips... those little fuckers are between $1 and $2. Each! I want insurance to pay for those and without a prescription, they won't. My doc also screwed up the metformin. I'm 100% sure he ordered 2000mg a day, but the pharmacy said he only ordered 1000mg a day. They said I could get more (I already have a supply of the 500mg tablets) in a week or so. But at 2000mg a day, I'll be out by Saturday. So I have to call up the doctors office and hope someone is there to take a message and that the doc is in sometime this week to write the prescriptions.
Thankfully Mom is feeling better this morning. Or at least that's what she says. R has the day off so I'm going to head into work. We had planned a Christmas meal with my aunt and her boyfriend, but that is almost assuredly off. Mom just won't feel up to it by then and really shouldn't put out any effort for the next few days.
Oh... and while it IS installed, mom has no idea how the remote starter works. She's felt to much under the weather to even try it out.
So sorry to hear about your mother's health, but with you around, I'm sure she'll be fine in no time!
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas to you and your loved ones!