My mother has Parkinson's, and lives in an assisted living facility. She recently changed doctors, and the new one had a blood work-up done.
Things were pretty normal for someone in their mid-70s with Parkinson's, except for her hemoglobin. Normal range is 12-15 or so, hers was 8.3. Got a test several days later to re-check that; level was 7.5.
Doctor gets the result, tells me to take Mom to the ER for a transfusion, plus possibly some other stuff too. Tells me to go to Facility X. We get there, they don't do the other stuff and may or may not have the right things to transfuse Mom. They say go to facility Y, which has a "proper" ER instead of "just" an Urgent Care. It is not affiliated with the other facilities we are dealing with, but is the ER for the area.
So off we go. They check some stuff, including her hemoglobin levels. They're 8.5, and Facility Y does not transfuse due to hemoglobin levels unless they are below 7.0. So she gets treatment for some other stuff (not the "may or may not" stuff above, even!) and gets released.
Doc wants to know what's going on with her blood, so she prescribes a scoping. Both ways, up and down. We do the consult with the GI doc, and her staff says that "We can do date A or date B; we will let you know which later." I am not available on date A, and tell her such.
A week or so from date A, I get a voice mail "your procedure on date A has been moved back an hour." I call back, tell them again that I cannot make date A. So they schedule her for date C at 3 PM. They later call to move it to 2 PM. At facility W.
We get all the prep done ("attempting to launch oneself into orbit from the privacy of one's bathroom") and hire an overnight caregiver to make sure there aren't any problems that the staff of the assisted living place might take too long to help with.
We are to show up 2 hours early for the procedure, so we get to facility W at just before noon. Where we are told that we were supposed to go to facility Z instead. Some of the docs they gave us said W, some said Z. And the person who called me had said W....
So we are finally at the right place, we get up to the semi-private room and get the paperwork taken care of. They are doing some checks on Mom, and one thing they notice is her blood pressure is high. Very high, in fact, higher than we've ever seen it. (She gets AM/PM readings daily at her place.) Every time they re-check, it is getting higher. It finally is at 210/95 or so. And they call the anesthesiologist, who is in surgery. So they try the on-call one as well. No response.
By this point it is well after 3, and nothing has started. Mom is starving after more than 24 hours of not eating (she started fasting a little early the previous day) and 4-5 hours of not having any water either. She is shaking from that and from missing her 3:00 dose of Parkinson's medication. So she pulls the plug on the whole thing.
Finally the anesthesiologist makes it out of surgery and comes over to talk. Mom explains that she is shaking, her meds have worn off, she is hungry, and she is frightened of the PB readings. Despite the assurances that her BP will "almost certainly" go down when she gets the Good Drugs (TM), she says that's it. The doc takes about 10 minutes to try to convince her to go through with it, but they both know that she is absolutely able to cancel if she is concerned about anything.
It is after 4 by the time we finally get out of there. First thing we do is hit a fast food place so mom can have a burger. And some water.
On the way I made an appointment with her GP to talk blood pressure, which will be on Monday.
We couldn't cancel the caregiver who we also had coming in last night just in case there were any aftereffects from the surgery; it was less than 24 hours notice.
Fun fun fun fun fun.
I guess we can chalk this up as a practice run, because I'm pretty sure we'll be doing it again some time next month.
Things were pretty normal for someone in their mid-70s with Parkinson's, except for her hemoglobin. Normal range is 12-15 or so, hers was 8.3. Got a test several days later to re-check that; level was 7.5.
Doctor gets the result, tells me to take Mom to the ER for a transfusion, plus possibly some other stuff too. Tells me to go to Facility X. We get there, they don't do the other stuff and may or may not have the right things to transfuse Mom. They say go to facility Y, which has a "proper" ER instead of "just" an Urgent Care. It is not affiliated with the other facilities we are dealing with, but is the ER for the area.
So off we go. They check some stuff, including her hemoglobin levels. They're 8.5, and Facility Y does not transfuse due to hemoglobin levels unless they are below 7.0. So she gets treatment for some other stuff (not the "may or may not" stuff above, even!) and gets released.
Doc wants to know what's going on with her blood, so she prescribes a scoping. Both ways, up and down. We do the consult with the GI doc, and her staff says that "We can do date A or date B; we will let you know which later." I am not available on date A, and tell her such.
A week or so from date A, I get a voice mail "your procedure on date A has been moved back an hour." I call back, tell them again that I cannot make date A. So they schedule her for date C at 3 PM. They later call to move it to 2 PM. At facility W.
We get all the prep done ("attempting to launch oneself into orbit from the privacy of one's bathroom") and hire an overnight caregiver to make sure there aren't any problems that the staff of the assisted living place might take too long to help with.
We are to show up 2 hours early for the procedure, so we get to facility W at just before noon. Where we are told that we were supposed to go to facility Z instead. Some of the docs they gave us said W, some said Z. And the person who called me had said W....
So we are finally at the right place, we get up to the semi-private room and get the paperwork taken care of. They are doing some checks on Mom, and one thing they notice is her blood pressure is high. Very high, in fact, higher than we've ever seen it. (She gets AM/PM readings daily at her place.) Every time they re-check, it is getting higher. It finally is at 210/95 or so. And they call the anesthesiologist, who is in surgery. So they try the on-call one as well. No response.
By this point it is well after 3, and nothing has started. Mom is starving after more than 24 hours of not eating (she started fasting a little early the previous day) and 4-5 hours of not having any water either. She is shaking from that and from missing her 3:00 dose of Parkinson's medication. So she pulls the plug on the whole thing.
Finally the anesthesiologist makes it out of surgery and comes over to talk. Mom explains that she is shaking, her meds have worn off, she is hungry, and she is frightened of the PB readings. Despite the assurances that her BP will "almost certainly" go down when she gets the Good Drugs (TM), she says that's it. The doc takes about 10 minutes to try to convince her to go through with it, but they both know that she is absolutely able to cancel if she is concerned about anything.
It is after 4 by the time we finally get out of there. First thing we do is hit a fast food place so mom can have a burger. And some water.
On the way I made an appointment with her GP to talk blood pressure, which will be on Monday.
We couldn't cancel the caregiver who we also had coming in last night just in case there were any aftereffects from the surgery; it was less than 24 hours notice.
Fun fun fun fun fun.
I guess we can chalk this up as a practice run, because I'm pretty sure we'll be doing it again some time next month.
Comment