October brought two hospital visits. Severe dehydration & confusion. I learned a new thing – when the body is too dehydrated to IV, the next option is an IO, intraosseous infusion. That’s the process of going directly into the bone marrow when intravenous in not accessible. This process was quick.
The dehydration was starting to affect kidneys as his blood pressure was also extremely low, even lower than his usual 90/60. Needless to say, he didn’t feel well. When I took his blood pressure, his right arm was very cold, the left arm was still warm, but it eventually became ice cold too. It was as if conservation of blood flow had started. I didn’t feel his legs, but just asked him to get in the car. This time he didnt argue, but wanted to vomit first before getting in the car. My hand was on the phone for the next 2 minutes, which seemed like 30. In the adjoining bedroom, I told him that it was time to call for help. The other symptoms he had was being clammy and mid back pain. Even though there was no chest pain, I though he might be having a heart event. After 2 minutes I had a bucket & off to the hospital we went, which is less than 2 minutes to drive.
Heart failure is when the ejection fraction is below 40%. My husband is at 25%.
Follow up visits were good news though. While in the hospital receiving fluids, his cardiologist visited. The enzymes indicated heart attack had trended down. Due to the dehydration, they were taking him off his diuretics & all but one blood pressure medication. His blood pressure laying, sitting & standing was the best I’d seen it in a long time.
It was very frustrating for him to finally feel better and actually have an appetite, but still get out of breath so easily.
While in the hospital, swallow tests were given to determine how to help with choking on food. We have a speech therapist now coming to the home as well as an occupational therapist.
Chronic pain is not good for quality of life. He would like to get that pain back down to a 5. He purposely asked to go off morphine. He has now said he thinks it made him black out. The pain level has increased because of that. We now wait to try a pain clinic for other options.
My goal is to get a great quality of life with pain at a manageable level to not cause over confusion. It’s a balancing act.
Journey By Eskew 