Test and Evaluation

This morning June and Ernie attempted to go to the doctor on their own and things proceeded to get more difficult as time went on. Their appointment was at 8:50 and as they began the day mother woke with a severe case of nausea. It was so bad it was all she could do to take the nausea medicine. The pill crusher was misplaced and all white pills must be crushed and mixed with water in order for June to swallow them. June has had a restricted esophagus since her radiation treatments last year. Neither June or Ernie had slept well last night and were up at 3:00am changing out the I-V. They never really rested the rest of the night. As Ernie went out to bring the car to the back yard the battery was dead. It would not start for any reason. They had it in their mind that they would drive the pickup truck to the doctor’s office. I had just called them prior to the time all of this began and everything was OK at that point. As I arrived at work Ernie called and asked me to come over immediately and help him get mom in the truck. I thought to myself this is not going to be an easy task. On my way over I thought about how this might be accomplished. As I was going around the S-curve it dawned on me I could swing by Judy’s work and pick up our car. I called her and she ran out of the school and we exchanged our personal items and away I went to pick up my folks. We only needed ten minutes or so to get to the doctor’s office and heck I had twenty minutes to get to my parent’s house, get them into the car, load the wheelchair and walker into the trunk and make the short drive to the appointment.

We arrived at the PAPP clinic with a couple of minutes to spare. By the time we got mom inside and I parked the car they had already brought her into the examination room. Of course we provided the history of mother’s health and our reason for coming today and expressed our concerns of the moment. We were not able to meet with June’s primary physician and the doctor substituting was actually the pulmonologist that mom will probably meet with in a week or so. As we informed him of the information we received Monday afternoon he setup an appointment for an ultrasound this afternoon and an appointment with the kidney specialist on Wednesday at 1:15pm. We were in and out of his office in fifteen minutes or so. We went to the lab for a blood draw and returned home by 10:00.
So how was your day?

Tomorrow we will have a good feel for what all of this information about creatinine is all about. With the current ultrasound of the kidneys and blood draw the kidney specialist should be able to tell us the seriousness of the situation. The good news is that I spoke with Dr. Thornton again this evening and she informed me that by catching this problem so quickly it is likely that any damage, if any, will probably not be permanent. She felt dehydration could have contributed to this condition as well as the high strength antibiotic mom has been on the last few days. Now which antibiotic was the culprit? That’s what tomorrow should reveal.