So, you know that old saw about the best laid plans of mice and men? That was the last couple weeks for me.
It started, really, around the weekend of the 18th-19th. We were out doing our usual Saturday grocery shopping/errands day, and the BaldMan kept getting dizzy spells, especially when he was getting out of the car. He’d been registering some irregular heartbeat flags on the blood pressure cuff and his heart rate had been low for a bit, but the dizzy stuff was new. He called our doctor on Monday, and went in on Tuesday. Doctor did an EKG and sent him to a cardiologist right away. The one he’d been seeing wasn’t in his office that day, but the doctor didn’t think he should wait, so they got him an appointment with a different one. We get to cardiologist’s and after he sees him, he said he needed a pacemaker because it appeared the electrical signals between the heart chambers weren’t getting across and that was causing the slow heart beat (brachycardia). He said they could put the pacemaker in on Wednesday, but wanted him in the hospital overnight for observation.
Sigh.
The hospital is in the same complex as the doctor’s office, so they wheeled him over in a wheelchair, where we sat in the ER for a while. Eventually, they got him in and checked out. For while, it looked like he was going to have to spend the night in the ER, but they managed to get him an ICU bed at some point. They wanted him in either the ER or ICU because this type of block can cause blackouts- or worse- and they wanted to be able to deal with anything that might happen.
Well, the surgeon didn’t want to do the procedure on Wednesday. He wanted to wait an additional 24 hours for the blood thinners to work completely out of the BaldMan’s system. Reasonable precaution, but, yeah, one more night.
I went home mid-afternoon to walk the dog, get a few things done, get myself some dinner, and all that stuff. Came back to find three nurses in his room, staring at his leg.
“It looks really red and swollen.” “And it’s warm to touch.”
Oh, no! I thought, walking around to where I could see it. Yeah, the cellulitis was flaring up again. He’d had an ingrown toenail worked on and that’s what triggered the last bout. So, they got him on antibiotics overnight. Thankfully, it never progressed more, but, of course, no surgery on Thursday, either. Instead, the “marinated him in antibiotics” as the ICU doc put it. Caught it early enough and beat it back because the swelling went down, the margins of redness were receding, and his white count was normal by late Thursday. He also blacked out for the second time while there on Thursday night. This time, he was down for nine seconds. He said it was really freaky opening his eyes as he was coming out of it and seeing the heart monitor reading 0. Kind of glad I was home for that one.
They did the surgery on Friday. After Thursday night, the cardiologist didn’t want to wait and the infection was controlled, so in he went. All went well, and he came home on Saturday.
Sunday, we did basic shopping and a couple errands. Monday was supposed to be a nice, quiet, relaxing, do-nothing day. We had steak tips marinating (not in antibiotics!) to grill. He made eggs and bacon for breakfast. After breakfast, I felt a little nauseous. I went upstairs, got dressed, and felt really sick. Crawled back into bed, but that didn’t last. I was off to the bathroom very quickly. I will spare you the gory details, but it was either the worst stomach bug I can remember having or a bad case of food poisoning. Monday was horrible. Again, I won’t try to gross you out, but it was late afternoon before the worst symptoms eased up some. Then I got hit with stomach cramps. Those lasted until late Wednesday. I couldn’t sleep, there was no position that was comfortable, and I couldn’t eat much. It was an effort to keep drinking water but I knew I needed to. By Thursday, the symptoms were mostly gone, but I was so damn tired! I did basically nothing Thursday or Friday- only what absolutely had to be done. Saturday was better, and yesterday (when I wrote this) I felt much more like myself.
I suppose I don’t have to mention that I didn’t get much writing done during all this. I did get a tiny bit done on Friday, but I find I am out of shape there, too. I will talk more about that on Wednesday.
So, that was the end of my Merry Month of May. I trust yours was better?
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And So On... 