We are presently having adventures of an unpleasant kind. Again.

We had a followup with James' cardiologist on Monday morning. After fighting our way through rush hour traffic, we had to wait for the doctor because he was stuck in rush-hour traffic (apparently traffic on GA400 was backed up to Cumming, which is forty bloody miles away). He checked James over, asked him to make an appointment for an ultrasound, and we were free to go home.

James came home from dialysis that afternoon complaining of pain when he breathed in deeply. Hum.

By Tuesday the pain was better. He worked all day, we watched Forged in Fire. About bedtime the pain had increased again, but not terribly, and by the time next morning rolled around, it had lessened again and migrated to his left shoulder. At no time did he have any other form of pain, including anything to indicate heart trouble. He worked Wednesday morning and went off to an early seat at dialysis.

Thursday it was still hurting. We had to fish or cut bait. At 10 a.m. we went up to Kaiser Urgent Care in Kennesaw. He wasn't in there ten minutes when they told us he was having another heart attack! He was summarily bundled into an ambulance and taken, sirens screaming, to Wellstar Kennestone which was the nearest hospital. Twilight and I kept up with the ambulance pretty well until we hit the freeway, where it was too crowded for me to feel safe running at 80; had it been midnight we could have kept up. But I eventually made it, and made it back through a rabbit warren of corridors, and we sat and waited.

At some point they determined he did not have a heart attack. WTF? But we didn't learn this until we were given a room around dinnertime. What we did learn is that he had fluid on his left lung. I repeat: WTF?

I'll spare you the piecemeal details. He had lots of tests. They said an option was to aspirate the fluid from his lungs with a needle. However, this was a little dangerous on the Brilinta. They said they might try a dialysis treatment on Friday to get the fluid off. I went home Thursday night, walked the dog, scratched the bird, took a shower and dropped into bed. Friday morning I reversed the procedure except for the shower, and arrived to discover he'd been taken down for a CT scan.

There was more fluid in his lung than yesterday. They took him down for the needle aspiration, Brilinta or no Brilinta, and removed 1.6 liters of fluid from his left lung. Seriously...WTF? Anyway, he passed with flying colors, no problem at all, and they told him there would be pain because the lung needed to reinflate. (The no fluid breathing hurt worse than the fluid breathing. Just saying.)

tick...tick...tick...watch substandard television and wait. At five the nephrologist breezed in. Your kidneys are swollen and you have a blockage down there. I think I've heard this song before. Yes, it was our old friend Mr. Prostate blocking Mr. Urethra causing Mr. Bladder to run in reverse. The Kidney Twins don't work in reverse. Catheter was suggested. James protested that he has been urinating. Ah, but not enough.

Urologist comes in during dinner, convinces us catheter is a Good Thing. Mr. Bladder promptly sighs in relief and dumps 2000 milliliters of fluid in the bag. Well.

Unfortunately after the first bag it starts coming out stained with blood. We're told this is irritation. Well...yeah...considering. I go home after Masterchef Junior, sleep badly, and spend from six a.m. to six forty-five crying. Happy Saturday.

Needless to say James is still not feeling too swift. It still hurts when he sneezes, coughs, or takes a deep breath (pulmonologist was just here and says she will get an x-ray to see if problem is detected, but his lungs sound much better), the catheter hurts and what's coming out looks like strawberry juice, and he's depressed. (Hell, I'm depressed and I'm not stuck in here and not hurting.) So when every single person waltzes in here to ask him how he is, what's he supposed to say? The dialysis supposedly was supposed to help the fluid accumulation. But if his prostate is still obstructing his urethra, isn't the prostate the problem? This is the second time this has happened in less than two months, and this suck-ass process of going to different hospitals has not helped. They have his medicine doses muddled (they still have him on the high dose of Coreg when the cardiologist put him on a lower dose on Monday and now his blood pressure's low—ya think?—the cardiologist just came through and said he'll go fix that if need be) and four walls are just four walls.

I still like Wellstar Cobb and Northside better than here. It is, however, still heads, shoulders, and giraffe necks above Piedmont.

And for those of you who are waiting for the cafeteria report (like you were), Wellstar Cobb still holds the best record, although I hear the restaurant attached, the Bistro, isn't bad. But the food is too expensive (I checked yesterday hiking in from the Blue Lot, which the nurse told me was closer than the Green Lot; she must use a tesseract, because I had a shorter hike at Piedmont), so I'll stick to the cafeteria. Their chicken noodle soup is at least decent; I had three bowls of it yesterday because my alternatives were spicy chicken wings, Chick-Fil-A sandwiches (fried; ugh), and a Swiss steak that was seven bloody dollars. At least it wasn't an oversalted slice of deli turkey and a roll for the same price.

tick...tick...tick...still waiting. Thankfully we discovered TNT is doing a marathon of Star Wars today or we'd be watching sucky Chip and Joanna on HGTV.

Labels: food, health, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 12:27:00 PM

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