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It's been forever since I posted anything that wasn't directly related to either my weight or skating. I keep meaning to post something about life in general, about how much I love Kris, about how Ben is doing in school, about the beautiful new couch we got a few weeks ago, just generally about all the good stuff that has happened lately. So what finally gets me to post? My mom's health.
The past few weeks her INR has been really see-sawing. We just haven't been able to keep in in the safe band between 3.5 and 4.5. Then Wednesday morning it dropped extremely low (probably below 0.8, but the machine couldn't accurately test below that level). She was getting the chest pains she always does when she goes low, and she got the occipital headache that always comes with it. We went to the doctor, and ultimately wound up at Florida Hospital in Celebration. She was finally released from the hospital last night, after a very long and frustrating evening of waiting for the cardiologist to finally get around to clearing her (it's not her heart, it is never her heart, but new doctors always think it's her heart).
While she was in the hospital her INR moved back up to about 4.0 (that's good), but by the time she checked out it had dropped back down to 1.9 (that's not good, but not scary bad). The real problem is that there is nobody down here to monitor her INR and make informed decisions about how much warfarin she should be taking on any given day. Her doctors up in Seattle were fantastic, but it took them years to figure it out. Her doctor down here is very nice, and very smart, but she doesn't have enough experience with my mom to make the right call. The local clinic that my mom was referred to won't monitor her levels by phone and insists that she has to come in for a blood draw ever week instead of using the home test machine. The nurses up in Seattle have been very kind to continue to help my mom, but they are increasingly being placed in a very untenable position by being asked to make dosage recommendations without the benefit of seeing my mom directly. So in the end it winds up falling on us to make the judgement call. The person who is sick, and a lay person who only has a very general understanding of the forces involved, talking it out and making dosage decisions for a medicine that the hemotologists openly admit has so many interactions with so many other variables that every person taking it is different.
Argh. My head hurts.
The past few weeks her INR has been really see-sawing. We just haven't been able to keep in in the safe band between 3.5 and 4.5. Then Wednesday morning it dropped extremely low (probably below 0.8, but the machine couldn't accurately test below that level). She was getting the chest pains she always does when she goes low, and she got the occipital headache that always comes with it. We went to the doctor, and ultimately wound up at Florida Hospital in Celebration. She was finally released from the hospital last night, after a very long and frustrating evening of waiting for the cardiologist to finally get around to clearing her (it's not her heart, it is never her heart, but new doctors always think it's her heart).
While she was in the hospital her INR moved back up to about 4.0 (that's good), but by the time she checked out it had dropped back down to 1.9 (that's not good, but not scary bad). The real problem is that there is nobody down here to monitor her INR and make informed decisions about how much warfarin she should be taking on any given day. Her doctors up in Seattle were fantastic, but it took them years to figure it out. Her doctor down here is very nice, and very smart, but she doesn't have enough experience with my mom to make the right call. The local clinic that my mom was referred to won't monitor her levels by phone and insists that she has to come in for a blood draw ever week instead of using the home test machine. The nurses up in Seattle have been very kind to continue to help my mom, but they are increasingly being placed in a very untenable position by being asked to make dosage recommendations without the benefit of seeing my mom directly. So in the end it winds up falling on us to make the judgement call. The person who is sick, and a lay person who only has a very general understanding of the forces involved, talking it out and making dosage decisions for a medicine that the hemotologists openly admit has so many interactions with so many other variables that every person taking it is different.
Argh. My head hurts.
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From:
no subject
When I logged in on Thursday to check mail and received your note, it broke my heart to think that you had one more thing on your plate to worry about.
I can relate only too well, this week.
My mother went in the hospital on Monday. She didn't get out until Wednesday, but my family lied to me and said she got home Tuesday night because they didn't want me to worry while I was in surgery. She is doing fine now. Sure makes me appreciate the fact that both my parents are healthy, for the most part.
Take care of yourself! You know you are a very special person.