Reckon the moral of this story is; take care of yourself.
Yesterday, Thursday April 25, 2013, I took Judy to her doctor at the Kaiser Clinic in Martinez. She'd allowed me to bully her into admitting that the week old swollen ankles, bad sleeping, coughing and gravelly morning-voice warranted her seeing the doctor she'd avoided for a year.
Judy is kind of stoic and doesn't like addressing her aches and pains because if you ignore them they go away which is great for soldiers in combat but not so great when it is your mate.
I figured on it taking a while so I cleverly brought a book to while away the time while she was in with the doctor. Eventually, I was called into the office and the doctor explained that Judy would have to be going to the Kaiser Hospital in Walnut Creek and that she would get to ride in an ambulance because that was the fastest way to get admitted to the Emergency Room where they would assess her breathing.
By the time I had gone home to tend to the needs of Sweet Pea the cat and then go to Judy, she was in an ultra-modern room with a wall of plugs, attachments, gages, monitors and other doctor stuff; she was lying on a Stryker power-bed, with wires and tubes running from under both sides of her blanket to steroid and antibiotic IV's (They even gave her morphine to relax her labored breathing. She liked that...) and monitors and a clear (orofacial) mask over her nose and mouth with a hose running to a machine that pumped oxygenated air under pressure. She looked like an astronaut. Sorta.
The good blood-oxygen numbers begin at 90. Hers was 75.
They MRI'd and found a mass on a lung and lots of crud. Her breathing was more labored gasps than smooth. COPD
After nine and a half hours of using her as a prop for my book and the blood oxygen numbers finally getting to 90, I went home. 1:45 in the morning.
That four physicians and some nurses used the 'D'-word (death) and told her she still needed a couple days so their breathing equipment could clear the liquid from her lungs didn't override what she wanted to do so, Friday morning Judy checked herself out of the hospital.
We came home, she went out to her beloved sofa on the porch and lit a cigarette.
Okay, she said she had to and it was her last.
Then we had lunch, the first food she'd had in almost fifteen hours, the Apria Health Care guy delivered the Oxygen machine and seven oxygen bottles so we are set at home.
Monday we see the Pulmonary doctor.
She's sleeping quietly now, the cat sleeping between her legs, and the green hose snakes back to the oxygen machine in the office next door.
I'm terrified I'll lose her.
Yesterday, Thursday April 25, 2013, I took Judy to her doctor at the Kaiser Clinic in Martinez. She'd allowed me to bully her into admitting that the week old swollen ankles, bad sleeping, coughing and gravelly morning-voice warranted her seeing the doctor she'd avoided for a year.
Judy is kind of stoic and doesn't like addressing her aches and pains because if you ignore them they go away which is great for soldiers in combat but not so great when it is your mate.
I figured on it taking a while so I cleverly brought a book to while away the time while she was in with the doctor. Eventually, I was called into the office and the doctor explained that Judy would have to be going to the Kaiser Hospital in Walnut Creek and that she would get to ride in an ambulance because that was the fastest way to get admitted to the Emergency Room where they would assess her breathing.
By the time I had gone home to tend to the needs of Sweet Pea the cat and then go to Judy, she was in an ultra-modern room with a wall of plugs, attachments, gages, monitors and other doctor stuff; she was lying on a Stryker power-bed, with wires and tubes running from under both sides of her blanket to steroid and antibiotic IV's (They even gave her morphine to relax her labored breathing. She liked that...) and monitors and a clear (orofacial) mask over her nose and mouth with a hose running to a machine that pumped oxygenated air under pressure. She looked like an astronaut. Sorta.
The good blood-oxygen numbers begin at 90. Hers was 75.
They MRI'd and found a mass on a lung and lots of crud. Her breathing was more labored gasps than smooth. COPD
After nine and a half hours of using her as a prop for my book and the blood oxygen numbers finally getting to 90, I went home. 1:45 in the morning.
That four physicians and some nurses used the 'D'-word (death) and told her she still needed a couple days so their breathing equipment could clear the liquid from her lungs didn't override what she wanted to do so, Friday morning Judy checked herself out of the hospital.
We came home, she went out to her beloved sofa on the porch and lit a cigarette.
Okay, she said she had to and it was her last.
Then we had lunch, the first food she'd had in almost fifteen hours, the Apria Health Care guy delivered the Oxygen machine and seven oxygen bottles so we are set at home.
Monday we see the Pulmonary doctor.
She's sleeping quietly now, the cat sleeping between her legs, and the green hose snakes back to the oxygen machine in the office next door.
I'm terrified I'll lose her.
