We were getting ready for bed last night when James finished taking his shower and suddenly felt very weak in the knees. He continued to feel like that for a few minutes, so I had him sit down and take his blood pressure. It was 88 over 48. A minute later it was 92 over 50, and then it went back down to 88 over 48, and when he took it a third time, it was still there.

There was no help for it. He got dressed and I got dressed, and we went to Urgent Care. He had already taken his nightly medications, including the Ambien, so he slept all the way there. Ironically, the same nurse was on duty at the front desk as on Saturday, and the same nurse that checked us out on Saturday brought us into the back tonight.

They hitched James up to take his vital signs and now his blood pressure was back up to where it should be. But the doctor wanted to make sure it wasn't his heart, so we settled down for about five hours of tests. They thought he was a little dehydrated (how on earth when he drinks so much!) and gave him an IV of saline, some potassium, and, because his urine is still showing up with an infection, IV antibiotics. (I'm sure hoping that will help!) He was able to sleep through most of it; I spent the time trying to doze by leaning my head against his pillow, and, later, turning a chair sideways and then resting my head on a wadded-up sheet between his legs. For the last hour or so we were there they brought me a recliner and I kept my sheet for a pillow.

Well, they found no heart problem and didn't have any explanation for the blood pressure drop, although they though taking the Ambien before his shower might have caused a vasodilation and made it drop. The doctor was more concerned because his creatitine was at 2.8, which was higher than the last score (2.1), and wanted to keep him to "get it down." However, he has been taking furosimide for several weeks. The first thing the nephrologist did when his creatitine score started creeping upward was take him off furosimide; he only went back on it when he started to retain water. And when they took a second test right before they let us go, his creatitine had already dropped to 2.7. While he was there he did have a kink in his catheter line; the moment they cleared it the score dropped. That, the furosimide, and the Cipro may have combined to raise his score. I was afraid it would go up once he went back on the furosimide again. He will just need to drink more.

We got sprung about five o'clock. When we emerged the birds were already greeting the dawn even though it was still dark. The fastest way home was the freeway and it was already crowded with people heading to work. When we got home I took Tucker outside, and then we changed our clothes and crawled back into bed right at six and slept until after ten.

At noon James logged into work and worked for the rest of the afternoon (five hours). I was feeling terrible. Breakfast made me nauseated and I did the minimum of chores and then fell asleep on the sofa for a couple of hours listening to instrumental Christmas music. Later we had supper and I fell asleep again. We spent the evening watching Hunt for Red October.

Labels: health, sickness

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:24:00 PM

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