Chapter 609 - A Morning Like Some Others

 These nights now that I have broken the habit of either listening to Radio National (shame that I am missing useful, interesting programmes) or to music selections from Prime I am usually asleep by 2100, wake due to forces of nature once or twice before my main phone blares forth with an alarm and Alexa warbles another alarm at 0600 each and every morning, alerting me to rise and put a new cassette on her DAY pump before removing the NIGHT pump that had been delivering duodopa to her during the early hours. Then alarms also alert me to fitting a new cassette at 1600 and then swapping the NIGHT for the DAY pump at 2200. This is the new procedure advised by West Beer around the time she had the stoma tubing replaced recently (I may not yet have written about that saga). No explanation was given for running a pump  between 0600 and 2200 and the another pump between 2200 of one day to 0600 the next morning. I suspect it is an attempt to provide more defined flow rates to a patient rather than having a carer/patient manually change the setting twice in each 24 hours. The last time I admitted her to our local hospital after a Zombie Mode session, West Beer feedback to the local hospital suggested that such events were caused by patients mal-adjusting the pump settings and/or forgetting to turn a pump on. 

This mornings events proved those ideas wrong. I was unable to wake her at 0600 this morning. She was laying on her back, breathing strongly, almost snoring. There was no change an hour later so I checked her BP on her little wrist monitor and her oxygen level with the oximeter. Her BP was high at 162/95 and pulse 93 and the oximeter showed 97% oxygen and a pulse of 79. There was no change by 0800 when the Wild Dog carer arrived to shower her and I told her her services were not needed this morning. At 0845 she woke, I showered her and dressed her and by 1000 gave her breakfast.

The CBT training for Depression and Anxiety that I have been doing has encouraged me to continue my activities that I had given up, of which writing this blog was one, but I don't intend to write in great detail. Enough is enough.