Wheelchairs and vomit bags… Just two of the items seen during the day today.
The morning started out pretty good. Mom decided to go to the gym with me while dad stayed home to wait for the doctor to call. Mom worked out on three weight machines and then decided that was plenty exercise for the day. So I walked her down to the little lounge area where people drink coffee and gab then I went on and did my workout. When I got back to where she was sitting, she asked if I was ready to leave. I figured that meant she was ready to leave so we said goodbyes to the folks still there and headed on home. Apparently she became nauseous again this morning and vomited while I was working out. Not sure what is up with that. It comes on quickly and accompanied with a faint feeling. She just started a new medication on Friday and this happened on Saturday and Monday, so it may be related to the new drug. I told her today to call the oncologist and let him know what is going on so that they can tell her if she should continue taking it or what to do about these side effects. I was about to type symptoms, but then I remembered my EMT training from 20 years ago when they taught us the difference between signs and symptoms. A sign is something you can see (like vomiting) and symptom is something you feel (like nausea). Hmm.. train derailment. Ok let’s get back on track. The rest of the day mom has just been feeling blah. As she said, she doesn’t feel bad but she doesn’t feel good. Whatever that means. She is also very tired today. She has been sleeping pretty much since we got home from the gym. Just a little while ago I went in and asked her if she was thinking she might like to eat something, but she was pretty quickly asleep again so I suppose that is a no.
Onto dad’s day. I don’t know what to think. There is something wrong physically based on the visit we had to the respiratory center where his pulmonary specialist had him go for an oxygen saturation test. We got to the clinic and I thought we were going to have to turn back to the car half way to the clinic door. He was very unsteady on his feet. He made it though and after a short wait, he had three nurses helping him out with the test. We explained his condition to them and they were surprised when they sat him down and took an O2 saturation reading. It was 95%. They were surprised that it was that high given how he looked and walked and talked. They explained that they were going to take a resting read, then get him on a treadmill and if his saturation dropped below 88% they would give him O2 while he was on the treadmill and keep the reading going for as long as he could stand to be on the treadmill (which wasn’t going to be very long). The nurses were very nice and very caring. They treated dad very well. His saturation took no time dropping to the 88% mark. They gave him 2 liters per minute of oxygen and watched for a change in saturation, but it continued to go down so they bumped it up to 3 liters per minute. That halted the downward progression of saturation, but it was until he was seated and resting again that his saturation went back up to normal. I don’t know what all that means, and it’s probably not good, but I think I will just wait for the pulmonary specialist to review the results and make his determination. We have to go back there tomorrow afternoon for some further testing and then he has an appointment with the pulmonary specialist on Wednesday. They gave us a wheel chair to get him back to the car.
So they both had a pretty rotten day today ;(
Well I think that sums up the day. We shall see what fun stuff tomorrow brings!