ER #5/15

WARNING: THERE WILL BE A PHOTO OF BLOOD AT THE END OF THIS POST. Mom had been doing pretty good so far. She had been spending a lot of time sleeping, which is good so that her body can fight off the pneumonia. Every time she woke up to go to the bathroom I would take her temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and make her do her breathing exercises. I would also offer her food and water. Today was going pretty good, temperature was between 98.5 and 99.5 and her blood pressure ranged from 139/63 to 156/95. Her lung capacity had actually increased from 250 cc when she first got out of the hospital, up to 500 cc; and once today she was able to get it up to 750 cc. Prior to the pneumonia she was able to do 1000 cc. Previously, when she coughed, nothing came up. But this afternoon things started to come up. Skip down to the end to see the bloody results (or not).

Getting ready for the blood draw.

Dr. Bradley was one of the first people in Mom's room this evening. He is a resident working under supervision of Dr. Goodman, the head ER doctor. He asked Mom a bunch of questions. I showed him the ziploc bag with the 4 chunks that Mom coughed up; he declined to take them, saying I should give them to his supervisor. Now that I think about it I think Dr. Chin, who saw Mom when she came in on February 19th, was a resident also. He came in first, asked a bunch of questions, Dr. Rodriguez came in later, and at the end Dr. Rodriguez did all of the talking. (Dr. Rodriguez also called 2 days later to see what happened with Mom. I was really surprised that she called.)

Cool! They just did an x-ray in the bed in Mom's ER room! In all my visits to the ER, I have never seen them do an x-ray in the bed before. In case you're wondering, the title of this blog is based on the number of times I have been to the ER in 2017 (5) and since June 12, 2016 (15).

After the x-ray and blood work came back, Dr. Goodman came in with some bad news. Mom's lungs looked a lot worse than they did a couple weeks ago, her platelet count had also dropped to 7K since they released her from the hospital, and her electrolytes were out of whack. They gave her another intravenous antibiotic, potassium pills, & a unit of platelets to slow down the stuff in her lungs. Dr. Goodman is admitting Mom to the hospital so that they can do some things to make her comfortable, while Mom decides what she wants to do about hospice care. Also, late at night on a weekend, there are no community resource people around to provide information on what options are available. Curtis & I will talk with Mom more tomorrow, then on Monday we will all talk with the community resource people to see what Kaiser can offer and what else is available.

Curtis came to the ER after they finished celebrating Shaun's birthday. He didn't bring any birthday 'cake' because it was an ice cream cake. But he did stop at La Tour Cafe and brought us macarons and chocolate ooze cake for dessert. (And he reminded me to take a photo because the desserts at this place are awesome.)

Chocolate ooze cake with macarons (clockwise from bottom right: mint chocolate, blueberry cheesecake, strawberry, & red velvet,

The weather today was muggy again. So I worked on cleaning out the main freezer.It was packed full, sometimes things fall out when the door is opened. There are 6 shelves in the main compartment and 3 on the door. There is also an ice maker but it has never been hooked up because there is no plumbing on that side of the kitchen and the floor is slab on grade so a retrofit was too much trouble.

Before

Shelf #1 (the top shelf) was primarily mochi. It will remain as the mochi shelf but I will also use it for cooked rice. When we cook rice, I make a full pot. After dinner, I line the microwave steamer with parchment to make it easier to get the frozen rice out, then put it in the freezer. When the rice is frozen, I pop it out of the steamer and put it in a ziploc bag; it now conforms to the container that it will be steamed in!

Shelf #2 (the next shelf down) was a mix of things. But they all had one thing in common, a lot of ice covering them. That's because when Mom takes something out or puts something in the freezer she leaves the door open for a long time and this is the shelf where the cold air outflow is located. I know of two times where the repairman has had to come and defrost the freezer to stop it from making funny noises due to the ice clogging up things that shouldn't be icing up.


Here's one of the things I found on Shelf #2. Does anyone know if cream cheese freezes well? Or how long it can be kept in the freezer?


I also found a bag of frozen peas! I will be making sweet pea with garlic soup with it. Yum! I got the 'recipe' from Marilyn, owner of Cafe Zippy.


I also found 2 thermometers on Shelf #2. They were covered in ice like everything else on that shelf. I was wondering why there would be 2 thermometers, upon closer inspections I found out. The one on the left says the temperature is -3 degrees F, the one on the right says 20 F. Interestingly, the average between the 2 is 11.5 F which is closer than either to the 8 F that the info panel on the door says the freezer is at.

Note the ice all over everything.

I took them out of the freezer while I cleaned it and watched the temperature rise. The one on the right is only 1 degree less than the temperature at the nearest weather station, so it appears to be the more accurate of the two. Which would mean that the temperature setting on the door panel is not working.

I wonder what "Food" is supposed to mean on the one on the left?

Shelf #3 had a lot of ice because it is just below the outflow and the light stuck out just enough to catch a lot of the ice crystals that formed. I had put all the vegetarian and gluten free items for Sarah & David on this shelf. Plus the Holy's Bakery apple pie.

There was ice on the shelf rack also, but I forgot to take a picture before I started removing it.

Shelf #4 was the mother lode of freezer-burned meat and old looking food. After examining all the bags in the pink basket my plan is to throw everything on this shelf out. Which will happen on Sunday evening since garbage pick up is on Monday morning. In the meanwhile, everything to go out will remain on Shelf #4. (Though I might open up the banana bread and see if it is still good.) I am wondering if that was Mom's plan also, except that she forgot about taking it out on Sunday night.


Shelf #5 had a variety of things on it along with the ice trays and container Dad uses to put the ice cubes in. I put everything back as is. When Shelf #4 is vacant I will do a little rearranging to get things more organized. I needed to stop to make dinner before I was able to finish the entire freezer. The rest will have to wait till later.

The final chunk of blood that Mom coughed up before I decided to take her to the ER was in the middle of dinner. Fortunately Dad was almost finished eating, I wolfed down my plate of food while Mom got ready to go to the ER. I called Monica, the scheduler for Ho'okele Health and cancelled the care giver for tonight. (Brady was coming all the way from Waianae so I wanted to get to them as soon as possible so she didn't have to drive out for nothing.)

Happy Birthday to Dr. Mimms, Marilyn, and Shaun! Happy Marching Music Day, Grammar Day, Hug a GI Day, & Pound Cake Day!

WARNING: BLOODY PHOTO COMING SOON. This is the very first blood clot that Mom coughed up at about 4:15 pm; once did not concern me. Then at about 5 pm she coughed up another chunk; twice did not concern me. But then about 45 minutes later she coughed up 2 chunks about 5 minutes apart; so I called the Kaiser nurse advice line. Because of the pneumonia and the low platelet count they wanted to see her to be on the safe side.

It's not that bloody to me, but it's too bloody for some others. Sorry, no photos of the bag with the 4 chunks of blood.