Monday, December 31, 2007

Mom's Progress

Yesterday and today, Mom had a bad day with back pain and nausea. She really scared us all. We, family, have been so aggravated at the doctors for not meeting with us with information of her progress. On top of that we've gotten nothing but mixed information from her nurses. One nurse will tell us one thing and another one will say something totally the opposite. Ugh! Susan, Maryann, Sherry and myself spoke to Mom's weekend Cardiologist, Dr. Aurora, and he said she was a really sick woman with congestive heart failure. Her heart is beating 20-25% when it should be 50-55%. He went on to say that it's going to take time for her heart to get better, but right now she is still in CVICU because of the bacterial infection in her blood. Today, Mom's Cardiologist, Dr. Parks, said her heart is perfectly fine and it was still beating at 20-25%. It's just going to take time for her heart to heal on it's own. Dr. Parks informed us real quick that he didn't know anything much about the infection in her blood. I believe the only reason we were able to speak with Dr. Parks is because Mom had a real bad episode. Sherry, June and myself were in her CVICU room reading her Get Well cards and massaging her hands. Mom was relaxed because she drifted off to sleep and she began talking in her sleep. She drifted off and on to sleep. All of the sudden, she said she was cold and began shaking. We got some covers on her, but she still shook and said she was hurting all over her body. What scared me was she couldn't hardly talk for running out of breath and she began whizzing, trying to breath. The nurse said she was just a little excited and she needed to calm down. We couldn't understand that because there was nothing done or said for her to get "excited." June and I left the room, slowly, so we wouldn't make matters worse on Mom. Sherry stayed in her room with the nurse. Sherry kept asking the nurse, if she should get the doctor and the nurse kept making excuses. At first she said that Mom was alright and she just needed to calm down and then she said the doctor was doing his rounds and she didn't know how to get in touch with him. During this episode, Mom's blood pressure went up to 198/125 and her heart rate went up to 149. By this time Sherry demanded that the nurse get her doctor to check her out. The nurse decided to do an EKG on her and make sure everything was alright with her heart. Sherry thought she could just stand outside her door, but the nurse told her to leave the ICU. Of course, Sherry wasn't happy about it, so she came out in the waiting area to tell me what was going on. I guess June was so upset, she had to go outside and have a smoke and talk to Maryann about it. I got on the phone with Sue and let her know what just happened. I didn't mean to make her upset, but I knew she needed to know. Sue let me know right away that she was on her way. After Mom's episode was over, she was resting and we got to talk to Dr. Parks. I asked Dr. Parks what had just happened and he said it was from the infection. Sherry asked the doctor, if she might have Indocardydous(?). He told her that she very well could have it, but their don't going to test it right now. They are wanting to give the antibiotics a couple of weeks and if she still has the infection, then they would do other tests. Where is Dr. House when ya need him? I think Dr. House would have this case solved and closed yesterday. They did another scan on Mom's gall bladder to see if it is functioning properly. Today's nurse said on Friday's scan of her gall bladder showed some slug. She said that since there is slug in her gall bladder then that tells us, maybe it's not functioning like it should. When I spoke to the nurse yesterday, she assured me nothing showed up on the scans of Mom's gall bladder, kidneyes or liver. Go figure! Since it's obvious, we are not speaking to the right doctor and Mom seemed to be resting quietly. We decided to leave around 4:45. Sue and Maryann felt good enough to not come down. Sherry found a phone number for Dr. Barnes, so I called it while we were waiting. Of course, I didn't get a hold of a nurse. All I could do was leave a message. I'm not expecting a call back from the nurse. It's not because of New Years, but because later I found out that it was the wrong Dr. Barnes. The Dr. Barnes, I left a message for was an Urologist and the one I needed was an Infectious Disease Specialist. Oh well!

We called Sandy last night to let her know about Mom's condition, which wasn't much information at all. She told us to call her if she needed to come home and we couldn't decide if it's time or not. We wanted to leave that up to Sandy because we are just not getting any straight talk from anyone at the CVICU. Sandy told us later, she'll be here tomorrow afternoon. Please keep her in your prayers because they are going through a bad snow storm right now.

I finally got Christmas pictures on the photosite. Happy New Years and God Bless You!

No comments: