4086 Incomplete diagnosis

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

"Between friends there will always be disputes.

It is not in the disputes themselves that we know our true friends,

it is in the way we address them."

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Over New Years 2012/2013 I was in the hospital with what was diagnosed as severe pneumonia, the "worst case the lung guy at the hospital had ever seen", to the point where they really didn't think I would live.  Organs were shutting down.  But within 12 hours on antibiotics I was already getting better.  The doctors were amazed.  (That post entry: http://thesilkentouch.blogspot.com/2013/01/mostly-back-again.html)

I think they didn't quite realize what I likely had!

When we had lost electricity for so long after Hurricane Sandy, and then got hit with a Nor'easter which dropped temperatures below freezing.  With no power I had tried to keep warm by boiling water constantly on the gas stove, and by filling both bathtubs with hot water.  The house was filled with warm steam.

From an article about illness caused by cooling towers in NYC, "A type of severe pneumonia, Legionnaires' disease -- which was named after an outbreak during a 1976 meeting of the American Legion in Philadelphia -- is not spread from person to person but by breathing in mist with the organisms. Outbreaks usually occur in the summer."

"By breathing in mist with the organisms..."  What you want to bet I had Legionnaires?

Legionnaires usually develops within 10 days of exposure.  If it was Legionnaires, and if it was due to my breathing all that steam, I must have been fighting it off for a good six weeks before I couldn't fight it any more.  I do know that I was getting progressively weaker all through November and December.  I thought at the time it was just age and kidneys catching up with me, plus that I am very sensitive to molds, and with all the houses and mountains of household goods rotting away all around us from Sandy flooding, I thought that's what it was.

Interesting.  Maybe if not for the mold I could have eventually fought it off.

Even more interesting, the folks most at risk of death are older people, smokers, and those with weak immune systems (like from kidney problems or diabetes).  Boom, boom, and boomity-boom-boom.  

I must be in better shape than I thought.  
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3691 Jasper is a good boy.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

There is a direct correlation between the size of the hoop earring

and the sluttiness of the wearer.

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Jasper hadn't seen a vet since we moved him here, partly because he freaks out so badly in the car that he has seizures, so he's way behind on checkups and shots.  Two of Daughter's three cats are similarly afflicted with car anxiety, and lucky for us, there's a vet who has outfitted a large RV as an office complete with x-ray and out-patient surgery.  He parks in the driveway and you bring your beasty out.

One of Daughter's cats had injured a paw last Thursday night, so Daughter made a Friday appointment for her cat, and for Jasper.

HOW DO CATS KNOW!?  The minute I got off the phone with Daughter, Jasper's ears went up, his eyes got big, and he ran and hid.  It ended up two hours later, appointment time, with me chasing him in circles around the house.  He started to run into the laundry room, realized that was a dead end, and just as I got to the doorway he changed direction and dodged out between my legs.  I reached for him, tripped over him, and jabbed the door frame with an over-long fingernail, bending it back mid-bed.  It HURT!  And it bled.  And the most amazing thing happened.

Jasper stopped, came back, sniffed my finger and my face as I sat there on the floor whimpering, and pretty clearly asked if I was ok.  He was apologetic.  He let me pick him up and bundle him into the carrier with a minimum of fuss.

He's such a good little boy.  (Also 12 lb. and very healthy.  And fascinated by the rabies tag on his collar.)

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Last January the eye doctor mentioned that I had a spot of dry macular degeneration in each eye.  The first time a doctor had mentioned them was in the late '90s.  Oddly, not every exam has produced mention.  The spots must small enough to miss on older equipment.  I'm older now, so I guess I should pay closer attention.  I made an appointment for today to check if there had been any progression.

There's been no change.  The doctor recommended a special vitamin/mineral plus lutein supplement. 

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I mentioned a problem at the hospital.  Someone else's intake form was in my folder in the ER.

In my post of 1/02, I find in retrospect I had made excuses for some of the doctor's and the hospital's actions.  It was not true that I had any kidney failure going on.  That whole thing was because I had mentioned that my last hospital stay was because of the kidney thing, and my kidney doctor was on staff, and he sort of moved in on me and took over and tried to force me into some tests I had previously refused .  Note - he pissed me off so much in the hospital that I have fired him.  It was not tachycardia that got me the heart monitor.  I had no chemical imbalances.  My sodium was fine.  I think it was the other woman's intake form that made things look worse than they were.

It IS true that the lung guy said that it was the worst case of pneumonia he'd ever seen.  It's also true that the nurses used a phrase in front of me (they thought I was asleep) that's code for "may not last the night, check often".  However, again, that prognosis may have been in error.

For the first three days, they had me listed as diabetic.  They were poking me several times a day to check my blood sugar, and the kitchen had me on a diabetic diet - wouldn't give me Jello or ice cream when I asked for it.  I'm not diabetic!  My blood sugar stayed rock solid, until once when I had two glasses of fruit juice just to see what would happen, and it went up one point.  Then right back down again.  I DO NOT HAVE DIABETES!  Yes, I do mostly follow a diabetic diet, because my father's family is riddled with it so I'm at risk, but hey, you don't wait until you have a heart attack to follow a heart-healthy diet!  I finally convinced them it was not necessary to keep testing, and to take me off the diet restrictions.

Also for the first three days, they had me on the cardiac floor, wearing a 24-hour heart monitor, and I had many visits from a cardiologist, and several ECGs, some kind of heart sonogram, and a heart CT scan.  Duh?  When I first arrived, my pulse rate was 100, but a) I tend to historically have a rapid heart beat anyway, usually in the low 80s, b) I had just arrived at the hospital and was upset, and c) it went down to normal (for me) rapidly and stayed low.

Finally, about the third day, I asked the cardiologist (who kept urging me to make an appointment with him as soon as I got out of the hospital) why people seemed so concerned about my heart, and he said, "We have to address your chest pain."  I said, "What chest pain?  I have no chest pain.  I haven't had any chest pain."   He said, "The chest pain you reported when you arrived at the ER."  I reiterated that I'd had no chest pain, and had NOT reported chest pain.

Within hours, the monitors were removed, and I was moved from the cardiac floor to a medical floor.  The cardiologist stopped visiting, too.

So, I'm wondering if some poor woman had arrived about the same time I did, with diabetes and reporting chest pain, and because the intake forms were screwed up I was treated for her problems (you know the intake info went directly from the form into the computer), and God only knows what treatment she was getting, possibly based on my intake info.

Also, I wonder what UNNECESSARY tests, monitoring, and doctor visits MY insurance is going to be billed for (and I will be co-paying on).  I can get copies of the reports and stuff, and an itemized bill, but I wonder if there's any way to determine what was necessary, and what was the hospital's error.  You KNOW they're not going to simply admit an error.
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3690 The Collapse

Thursday, January 17, 2013

“Elitist” is redneck code for “educated”.

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So, I was let out of the hospital two weeks ago yesterday, and I think I've been 100% for at least the past ten days.  Full of energy, but I'm being good and not trying to do too much, as they'd warned me not to try.  It's only now that I realize how weak I had been for quite literally months.  My strength had been ebbing since the hurricane in early November, and the subsequent 11 days with no heat.

The Nugget had started nursery school in like September(?), and as expected she's had one cold with and without ear infections after another.  She and I traded back and forth.  She got better between bouts - I didn't.  I went a little more downhill with every cycle.

By late November I was having difficulty getting up if I had been sitting on the floor.  By mid December I had difficulty getting out of the tub after a bath.  By late December I was having difficulty going up stairs, even if it was just one step.  I had no strength in my legs.

Whatever was going on seemed to affect my thinking, too.  The weakness having come on so gradually couldn't have been all of it.  I noticed, but I just chalked it up to ... age?  I don't know.  Mostly it was that I had lost the capacity to care.  Is that depression?

By the time of my Thursday, 12/27, post, when I said I'd been sick for so long, I hadn't slept in like three nights, because of the coughing.   That night I coughed so hard I did something to a rib in my back.  It hurt so very badly when I coughed.  Friday morning I went over to Daughter's house hoping for massage or something, and she insisted on taking me to the ER.

Some weird stuff happened there.  I kind of tuned out and let go, so I don't know a lot of what went on that day.  The ER was very busy.  I was on a stretcher in the hall from late morning until sometime in the evening because they didn't have a room or something, but I didn't lack for attention from nurses, doctors, x-ray technicians, vampires. 

At one point someone left a file folder on my stretcher.  MY name was on the outside.  Daughter opened it, and was reading a form in it, when she said, "This isn't your name."  She flashed a page at me.  All I saw was "DIABETIC" in large letters across the middle of the page.  Daughter ran off and gave the folder to a nurse, and there was some fuss, and then I lost interest.  But somebody had screwed up badly.

For the next three days, that mistake haunted me.

Next post....

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One of the reasons I haven't updated before this is because after several weeks of good behavior, my laptop is choking again.  I started this post at 7:25.  It is now 8:45.  I've been getting hanging scripts which kill Firefox.  I've had to restart twice.  I just plain haven't had the patience to fuss with it.  I assume it's the "updates out of phase" thing again.
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Mostly back again.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Was discharged from the hospital this evening.  Tired and weak.  They told me to take it easy for a few weeks, get back slowly.  Otherwise, I feel great, and I have big gold stars all over all my test results.

I've left a few dozen doctors reeling.  When they looked at my intake x-rays they seriously didn't expect me to live.  Repeat that.  Seriously. The pulmonary specialist said he'd never seen a worse case of pneumonia.

I had injured a rib coughing, and THAT pain is what had taken me to Daughter for help.  She took one look at me and dragged me to the ER.  The pneumonia had screwed with other chemical balances, and I was in tachycardia, so they put me on a heart monitor.  Some other organs weren't functioning correctly.  My kidneys were on the verge of shutting down.  A team of specialists in major systems was rapidly assembled.

I guess they don't often find little old ladies my age who take no prescription meds on a daily basis.  Within 12 hours on the antibiotics I was doing better, and within two days everything was within specs.  My BP was 128ish/68ish, pulse had settled at 70, blood sugar held rock steady at 98-101.  Temperature wandered a bit, and my blood oxygen level was too low, at about 88 off oxygen and 93 on, but hey, I still had a chest full of infection.

So, they kept me until my blood tests said no more white blood cells marauding  (infection done), and my off-oxygen saturation, what I could manage all by myself, was holding in the low 90s.

The doctors think I'm amazing.

That damn rib STILL hurts a LOT though!
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