So, I didn't sleep well last night, then woke up this morning to discover I was furloughed, thanks to the 535 useless members of the United States Congress, who are overpaid, take more vacations than most billionaires, and sit around making more noise than my budgie, who has more sense. Thanks for nothing.

Since our "Gifts'n'Games" event had been postponed tonight, we really had no plans for today, except for one thing. On Tuesday, James noticed he had some tightness in his chest when he breathed in all the way. Not when he breathed out, but when he breathed in, and only breathing deeply. He had no other signs of heart problems, and he had similar symptoms last year when he was sick, so we just watched and waited. Wednesday, same story, so Thursday morning, even though the pain had completely vanished, he called Kaiser to get checked out. We still have to watch out for edema, after all, and James got pneumonia last year even after having a pneumonia shot. They asked all the questions about other heart attack symptoms, and since they were negative, gave him an appointment on Friday afternoon, since they were backed up with flu patients.

Friday afternoon we saw Dr. Kaplan. He took an EKG, listened to James' lungs, send him downstairs for bloodwork and a chest x-ray. He said everything looked and sounded okay, but he still wanted James to have a D-diter test in case of a pulmonary embolism, so that was one of the things they took blood for.

This morning we got up to find a message on our phone: they hadn't drawn enough blood for the D-diter test and they wanted us to go up to Towne Park, which is open on weekends as urgent care, to get more blood drawn. Okay. Neither of us slept well, because I had my own troubles and James' knees were tormenting him. The steroid shots he received in his knees had worn off weeks ago and since he had to walk everywhere lately (like on car lots), they are causing him real pain. He was in pain enough last night to consider dropping his sleeping pills and taking a hydrocodone instead. This is a big decision because opioid drugs scare the daylights out of both of us, but he was hurting so much he was afraid he would never get to sleep.

But I couldn't find the hydrocodone the orthopedist had prescribed for severe pain. I knew I'd seen it in the drawer in the bathroom, but I either put it up "safe" because James said he was so afraid of becoming addicted to it, or it accidentally got tossed during the "old drug" purge. So instead, desperate, he took the gout pills that the doctor told him to only take as a last resort because they are bad for his kidneys.

So this morning we grabbed a burger each, stopped at Gordy Tire to see if they could fix the speaker on the truck (not today), and then went to Towne Park. James got blood drawn, and then he limped over to urgent care just in case they could provide the steroid shots in his knees. They couldn't; they don't do osteo services there. So we left and went to Barnes & Noble, only to get called back by Kaiser. His D-diter test was slightly high, and they wanted to know why he had left when he had checked in at Urgent Care! No one at the lab said they would be processing the results immediately and that we should stick around, and the visit to Urgent Care had nothing to do with the blood test.

So we went back to Towne Park about one and spent the rest of the day there. First, apparently it was so urgent that we come back that they called us, but then they left us cooling our heels in the waiting room for an hour, surrounded by at least twenty coughing, sneezing, miserable people with the flu! (The place was full of flu victims. They had them waiting on gurneys in the hall.) The nurse kept asking him when he had been "short of breath." He was never short of breath; he had a tightness in his chest when he took a deep breath in, and only when he took a deep breath, and the pain had now been gone for three days. At that point we were both a little testy, and we apologized to the attending about it. Really, if the D-diter test was high, we did want them to make sure he was okay. So he had more blood taken, another EKG, and a blood pressure and vital sign monitor, and cooled our heels watching some of the most terrible television ever. (They also said he'd have another chest x-ray, but that was never done.) When we got there the TV in the room was playing some Lifetime "woman in jeopardy" flick. There were only twelve channels, no solace of HGTV and Food Network or History Channel and Animal Planet, and once we watched CNN yammering about the furlough for a while, we were done with that. We ended up watching ski trials for the Olympics, which was better than basketball and the news and some Lifetime lady having a reaction to the drugs she was given.

Plus the gurney was too short for him; he was lying down like a frog with his knees all akimbo and bent, and he finally just sat at the side of it in disgust rather than lying down.

Finally the attending came back in. Another heart test they did came out okay. His EKG was okay. The only thing they did find wrong was that his creatitine level was back up, high! We were aghast until James remembered the gout pills he took last night, and we explained to her about his knee pain. She said the drug he took certainly could have shot the creatitine level back up again, and to not take it any longer. (We will certainly get rid of it!) So they said he needed to have another blood test in a week and they would send the result to the nephrologist, but they would add a note that he had taken the gout medication. She also gave him a prescription for more hydrocodone in case he needed pain relief.

We left there at six, hungrier than wolves (the nurse had come in about five, saying his blood sugar was really low—well, yeah, since the last thing we ate was at noon, except for the crackers I got out of the snack machine about three—and they gave us graham crackers, peanut butter, and saltines—all too salty and too sugary!). We stopped at Kentucky Fried and got two-piece grilled chicken boxes (one side and a cookie for dessert) and finally got home and were able to eat.

Exhausted, upset, but cheered up a bit by Britcoms.

Labels: errands, illness, television, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:20:00 PM

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