We Left

We're home.

Thursday was coming and going and I had already assumed we would stay at least one more night when Great and Wise popped in to talk.  The rash was better, the blood pressure was better, Marty was better and he thought we were out of danger and could go home.

Solu-medrol is a steroid that works wonders for a number of things, including allergic rashes.  Marty had been mainlining the juice for a couple of days, it had helped the rash enormously, but it had her wired and talking smack.  She had been saying all day she was leaving.  I guess she was right.

We got home that evening and Renea, Marty's caregiver, showered the hospital gunk off Marty and let her sit in her chair in the living room while I went and secured Renea and I some less than healthy fast food junk.  Marty had been fed at the hospital before we left.

By this time Marty, still fired up from the Solumedrol, was giving instructions and telling Renea and I what she would and wouldn't do.  Her rash was better but still there and she kept trying to scratch herself, no easy feat for someone with limited capacity in one arm.

As it turned out Marty stayed awake all night Thursday night.  She kept thinking she needed to get out of bed and she kept thinking she could get out of bed.  She normally can't use her left leg at all but Thursday night she kept moving both legs to the edge of the bed.  Renea finally relocated her to the center of the queen bed and Marty was not happy about that.

The half life of Solu-medrol, the time it takes to leave your body,  is 18 to 24 hours.  At about the 18 hour mark Marty finally succumbed to fatigue and fell asleep.  She slept for three hours, woke up with the residual effects of the steroids still driving her a bit.  She ate supper in bed, was showered again and went back to by 9 pm and asleep again about 10 p.m., completely exhausted.  She wasn't alone, I was pretty tuckered myself and we both slept all night.

Saturday and Sunday things moved toward normal. Today, Monday, we did all of the regular stuff plus we visited some pretty cool folks at our church.

She is still pretty tired and a little weak from the whole ordeal but I am pretty confident we are on the right track.

We have tumbled to the conclusion that the rash and low blood pressure, the reasons for the hospital visit, were caused by the contrast dye from a cat scan taken on the Saturday before our hospital incarceration.  That was the ER visit I initiated because of her fatigue and my anxiety level.

I guess that means this one was my fault because I took her to the ER to be examined and when they asked me if she had ever had a bad reaction to the dye I said no.  Guess what, I'll have a better answer next time.

Marty and I appreciate all of the feedback, the support and comments from our latest misadventure.  I read all of the comments to her and it's the closest I have seen her to tearing up since the stroke kind of broke her emotional center.  She was genuinely touched by the kind words, thought and prayers.

Thank you, this really sort of answers my questions about calling someone.  I will do better in the future Sue.

Making A Call

I never really know who to call or if to call anyone.  I know to let our children know, I know to let my parents know, but beyond that, I’m never sure who to call and say we are in the hospital again.

Part of my reluctance is that I really don’t want to bother people, part of it is I never know how long or serious and one event is going to be and a big part of it stems from my west Texas machismo, that I don’t need support because support means weakness and real west Texas men don’t need and don’t do weak.  Mostly I just don’t know how much others want to know.

We went for 3 years without being in the hospital.  When Marty went in February it was different so I reached out to some of our friends.  Since then, since last night, this is our third visit and I just don’t know if people want to know every time we darken the doors of Providence.

We went to the emergency room to have Marty checked out Saturday, mainly because she was really fatigued and my anxiety level was in the red zone.  We spent seven hours getting blood tests, urine tests and x-rays and essentially found nothing.  My anxiety went below the red zone, but not by much.

I went to Dallas Sunday during the day for my middle grandchild’s 2^nd birthday celebration.  My daughter Erin said I seemed tense; my response was “ya think?”  When you have lived with someone and watched them as long as I have cared for Marty you just get a sense of things, it’s hard to explain, but my “Marty-sense” was tingling all day Sunday.

By the time I got home Sunday evening Marty’s blood pressure had dropped and we piled into the van to take Marty back to the ER.  By the time we got there her BP was still too low and she had started to develop a rather ugly red rash, great.  I sent a text to our Great and Wise as we waited for a room.

There are a limited number of things that the rash could indicate.  A couple of things are not good at all, but it’s most likely a reaction to an iodine IV administered when she had a cat scan on Saturday.  The tech had asked me if she had ever any reaction to the iodine, I didn’t know and rolled the dice to get the x-ray.  Marty got the rash, that’s somehow not completely fair.

Great and Wise, bless his soul, came up to the hospital to check Marty out and in and wrote out the orders to admit us to the hospital.  There was never any real question about whether we were staying the night in the hospital.

As we sit here this evening Marty is a little doped up on Benadryl, her face, neck and abdomen are red with a rash and her blood pressure is still too low for me to feel comfortable and I don’t think we have figured out everything that is happening. 

Yes, we are back, 4^th floor east, and I’m up here wondering who I call, I’m wondering if I call, I’m wondering if people want to know, I’m wondering if you do this enough do people get a little immune to the seriousness of the situation and the call becomes a “one more time” kind of thing. 

Try as I might to get used to it, I don’t.   I still get anxious, I still worry, I still don’t sleep, and as many times as we go, as prepared as we are to go, as crazy comforting as it might be, being in the hospital is still a big kind of scary deal.  

Maybe calling some people is not a bad idea.