Chapter 369 - It's All Too Hard
A PD nurse from West Beer rang middle of the week to arrange an information interview about Duodopa in February next year. At 4AM this morning I rose for the loo and on the way back to bed I realised I had agreed to a date that clashed with the date for our local PD group, the meeting for which I had arranged a local psychologist to speak. In an attempt to relieve my stress about my need to remove the scheduling conflict I listened to my radio, a bad thing to do, because the discussions (serious, not mindless talk-back radio) became tangled into my dreaming so I woke a little before 7AM quite befuddled by a programme about the religious implications of a 1960's jazz composer's works, noise I think appalling. I now feel like what he possibly did when he died of liver damage.
I saw our GP about my faint-headedness and blood pressure matters. He thinks the combination of tablets I take may actually be reducing my BP too much, so asked me to change from Caduet back to Lipitor. I also on-line ordered a new BP monitor because my old one tended to disagree with her wrist model which professionals say is inaccurate anyway. So now I have an expensive model which even downloads stored readings onto my laptop (a selling point for someone like me ;-)
Early in the week she complained that her bidet was malfunctioning. On dis-assembly I found signs of water on the power supply module. After a considerable time and several partial re-assemblies, I discovered the water came from a fine spray coming from a hair-line crack in the heated water tank, only evident once all cabling and water hoses were connected and water pressure applied. I made an executive decision that a new bidet (expensive), rather than buying a replacement tank requiring disturbance of water seals, was the speediest and most reliable repair path. So for three days she needed to use conventional methods for cleanliness after a poop, very difficult for her. The new bidet arrived Friday morning, I tested it, then required a warm body to really make sure it was operational. When the bidet failed to work I almost panicked until I realised we had a general power failure. Shit happens.
After some initial success with the Macrogol which she began on November 9th, her bowel motions again became a bother to her, the feelings of incomplete voiding. The GP Dr I. suggested (when I saw him) to increase the dosage to two, or even three sachets, per day, so I am giving her two each day, at breakfast and at the evening meal, beginning on December 4th.
Friday was a bad day for her. She lacked feeling in her feet, felt bloated, did not eat all of her meals, was uncomfortable sitting on her recliner, frequently needed the wheel chair to get to the loo. I took notes throughout the day, a practice that has lapsed because doing so depresses me and irritates her. Between midnight to midnight Friday she needed to be on the toilet or commode 11 times for a piddling and 5 times for a pooping; each event required my assistance except one when the physio assisted her. In anybody's book, this is excessive.
Last Tuesday I took a urine sample (collected at 6:30AM in the bedpan the GP suggested I buy for such purpose, although she sat on the commode while I held the bedpan beneath, since squatting on floor or bed is impractical) to the pathology nurse to check whether the antibiotics were successful with the last UTI. No results forthcoming yet.
Early in the week I panicked when I ordered the kit of Apomine accessories; infusion needles, syringes and saline ampoules, and saw that the supplier was out of stock. We had enough infusion needles to last until tonight, Sunday. I rang the distributor to be told that the kit would be in stock on Friday, which means we will not receive the order until at least tomorrow, Monday. So I ordered 2 packets of infusion needles, available separately without the other items, and they arrived on Friday. Which was fortunate because at 2:48AM Saturday morning she woke me to say that the pump was beeping, displaying the error message "OCCL" which means that the infusion needle was blocked. Restarting the pump did not clear the error and the tubing to the infusion needle was not kinked and there was no blood in the tubing. So I attached a new infusion needle to the pump and after waiting a couple of minutes for the Apomine to be pumped slowly down the tube, rather than priming it, I fitted the new needle to her and removed the old one. I calculated that she was not receiving any Apomine for about 40 minutes, so the beeping had not awakened her immediately.
Crap of a week.
I saw our GP about my faint-headedness and blood pressure matters. He thinks the combination of tablets I take may actually be reducing my BP too much, so asked me to change from Caduet back to Lipitor. I also on-line ordered a new BP monitor because my old one tended to disagree with her wrist model which professionals say is inaccurate anyway. So now I have an expensive model which even downloads stored readings onto my laptop (a selling point for someone like me ;-)
Early in the week she complained that her bidet was malfunctioning. On dis-assembly I found signs of water on the power supply module. After a considerable time and several partial re-assemblies, I discovered the water came from a fine spray coming from a hair-line crack in the heated water tank, only evident once all cabling and water hoses were connected and water pressure applied. I made an executive decision that a new bidet (expensive), rather than buying a replacement tank requiring disturbance of water seals, was the speediest and most reliable repair path. So for three days she needed to use conventional methods for cleanliness after a poop, very difficult for her. The new bidet arrived Friday morning, I tested it, then required a warm body to really make sure it was operational. When the bidet failed to work I almost panicked until I realised we had a general power failure. Shit happens.
After some initial success with the Macrogol which she began on November 9th, her bowel motions again became a bother to her, the feelings of incomplete voiding. The GP Dr I. suggested (when I saw him) to increase the dosage to two, or even three sachets, per day, so I am giving her two each day, at breakfast and at the evening meal, beginning on December 4th.
Friday was a bad day for her. She lacked feeling in her feet, felt bloated, did not eat all of her meals, was uncomfortable sitting on her recliner, frequently needed the wheel chair to get to the loo. I took notes throughout the day, a practice that has lapsed because doing so depresses me and irritates her. Between midnight to midnight Friday she needed to be on the toilet or commode 11 times for a piddling and 5 times for a pooping; each event required my assistance except one when the physio assisted her. In anybody's book, this is excessive.
Last Tuesday I took a urine sample (collected at 6:30AM in the bedpan the GP suggested I buy for such purpose, although she sat on the commode while I held the bedpan beneath, since squatting on floor or bed is impractical) to the pathology nurse to check whether the antibiotics were successful with the last UTI. No results forthcoming yet.
Early in the week I panicked when I ordered the kit of Apomine accessories; infusion needles, syringes and saline ampoules, and saw that the supplier was out of stock. We had enough infusion needles to last until tonight, Sunday. I rang the distributor to be told that the kit would be in stock on Friday, which means we will not receive the order until at least tomorrow, Monday. So I ordered 2 packets of infusion needles, available separately without the other items, and they arrived on Friday. Which was fortunate because at 2:48AM Saturday morning she woke me to say that the pump was beeping, displaying the error message "OCCL" which means that the infusion needle was blocked. Restarting the pump did not clear the error and the tubing to the infusion needle was not kinked and there was no blood in the tubing. So I attached a new infusion needle to the pump and after waiting a couple of minutes for the Apomine to be pumped slowly down the tube, rather than priming it, I fitted the new needle to her and removed the old one. I calculated that she was not receiving any Apomine for about 40 minutes, so the beeping had not awakened her immediately.
Crap of a week.
posted by Kilpike | 11:30 am
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