Saturday July 20, 2016, Marina Bay/Lake Cove RV Park

It has only been a week or so since I last wrote here, so I'm getting better about posting, right? I do have some news updates from us to pass on, so here goes.

Stella has finished up her cataract surgery and is recovering very well. She went back to the doctor the afternoon after the surgery and everything looks good. There were a lot of differences between the first and second surgery. The first operation was at 8:30am, which meant that we had to be at the hospital at 6:30 to start the preparations. We were done and going back home by 10 or so, so it was a breeze.

Wednesday, the day of her second operation, we were supposed to be at the hospital at 8:30 but we had no operation time until we got there. It turned out to be at 12:30 but I guess they called us in early because Stella couldn't eat or drink so they wanted her there to prevent her from getting hungry and eating something. She was allowed to drink water, but nothing else. The operation went very well and we got away from the hospital about 1:30 or so. We were told to come to the doctor's office at 3, hardly worth leaving the hospital... We came back home and got a snack and let Tramp out to keep him happy. We went back to the doctor's office to get his blessing on the surgery without any problem. Since I was now the caregiver, I asked her where she wanted to go to eat and she decided on her favorite Mexican food restaurant, Monterrey Tex Mex, so I took good care of her. 

Now to my issues. I had an appointment with  neurologist on Thursday morning to address my problems with my left leg. The leg feels very weak when I walk and feels as if my knee will collapse at times. The pain is pretty much constant, but occurs mostly at night around bedtime. It keeps me up every night and I seldom get over 4 hours of interrupted sleep. 

Dr. Kallil and his assistant (P.A.) did some investigating and found that my entire left side is weak, I have a problem with my lower back, but I knew about that as it is an old injury dating back to the 60's when I worked for my Dad at his Ford dealer, pushing cars around when needed. He also found a problem with my left rotator cuff, which I also knew about. This is an old weight-lifting injury from about 25 years ago. The last thing that he discovered was the beginning of neuropathy in both feet. This is a known ailment of diabetics, with no known cure. He did recommend some vitamins to slow the progress.

I was concerned about  getting test results back since we are leaving soon, but the doctor assured me that he could get it done. The receptionist set me up with an appointment at an MRI clinic for tonight! I wasn't aware that anyone worked late in that type of clinic, but I was wrong! She also set me up with two more tests for next Monday here in the office. 

Before going to the MRI clinic, Stella took my blood pressure and found it was 179/91, or pretty high. Remember in my last post, when I went to the hospital with high blood pressure? They gave me two new medicines, one a daily and one for "special occasions" when my pressure was over 160. Well, today I took one of the special occasion pills, and boy did it work! I was apprehensive about the MRI, but we got started on them. I did two today, one for my brain and one for my back. I didn't like the positioning for the MRI, but that's the way it is... I did the first one and was very dizzy after finishing it. The radiologist told me that this is pretty  common, some people get dizzy, some nauseous and some nothing at all. I decided to get it over with, so onward we went. This time, I was miserable, with chest pain from being cramped up in the cradle of the MRI, dry mouthed and just feeling bad. When I came out after it was finished, I was sick! The radiologist called Stella back with us and found a blood pressure machine to check my B/P. She checked me out and found a B/P of 92/72, very low but the troublesome thing was my heart rate was 180, very high. Apparently the medicine that I had taken knocked the blood pressure way down and my heart was racing to keep up. 911 was called and they came out and took good care of me. They took me to the Clear Lake E.R. where they fixed me right up! They gave me something by I.V. and then one of my regular meds and that brought everything back into proper range. 

I can't brag enough about the Houston Fire Dept. paramedics in the ambulance and Art, my male nurse and the medical professionals at Clear Lake. I hope to never have to return but if I do, I know they will take good care of me.

A couple of other things that happened. I almost missed my ambulance ride because of a misunderstanding. The ambulance crew thought they were looking for a patient in the parking lot and called their office to tell them that there was no one there. They were told to come inside where they found me and took care of me. Then when we were released, we had no ride back to the truck. Stella had ridden with us in the ambulance because she had just had her eyes operated on and didn't feel that she could see well enough to drive. When I inquired to the nurse, she gave me a voucher for a taxi ride from the hospital to the truck, so it all worked out.

I'll report back here when I learn the results of all the tests. 

So long.

Wednesday July 22, 2016-Marina Bay/Lake Cove RV Resort

Okay, I haven't died, only a scare...

It's only been a month since I last posted, but who's counting? It's not that we haven't been doing things, but most of it is boring - going to the doctor, etc. We have made what seems like a hundred doctor visits and most have been routine, but my visit to the cardiologist a couple of weeks ago turned out to be much more than routine. I went in for a follow-up visit and had my blood pressure checked as usual. It was a bit high at 150/73, but not high enough to be of concern to either me or the doctor and we had a nice chat. We went back home but I continued to monitor my blood pressure throughout the evening. It continued to go by small amounts, 160/78, 165/ 80, and ending with 173/85 at bedtime. Now I'm getting concerned, as there was no reason for it to continue this upward trend. We decided to go to the hospital to get checked out with a better B/P monitor and to get further advice, right? By the time we got there it had gone to 185/100... Glad I made the drive over now. Long story short is that they gave me a new medication and a second one to take in case of higher blood pressure. Brought the old B/P right back down and all was good, right? 

I didn't get to see my doctor for a couple of weeks. I did go into his office for more testing for another issue, but he was surprised when I did get to see him to learn that I had been taking this new medicine and had suffered a couple of low (123/73 and that day 118/68, with resulting dizzy spells) so he instructed me to stop taking the new meds and continue with our original plan, which has been working just fine. We'll see how this works.

Enough about me...  We have been seeing and visiting with friends and family while we are down here. We picked Cameron up one afternoon and brought him over for a visit here and he helped me set up the porch and steps. We had a nice visit and he may come back over to swim.

We went to Center to visit Janie one day and had a very nice visit but we decided it wasn't long enough. Last weekend, we had a free weekend and drove back to Center for the weekend to stay and visit with her. The problem is, we drink decaf coffee now, so she found an old coffee pot to use for our coffee. She found it, but couldn't reach it in the cabinet, so I went in to get it down and stepped up on a stool to reach it and when I stepped off, my bad left leg collapsed and I went down, hitting the back of my head.

It looks worse than it actually was, and never really bothered me. It hurt all right! but not as bad as you might think. I never lost consciousness and it only bled a little. I am fine now and it's not even sore any more.

Stella's final eye surgery is next week and if all goes well, we should be out of here and on the road again pretty soon. We certainly hope so! In reflection, this is our first time to spend any summer time in Texas since we retired and went on the road, and we are not having a good reaction to the heat. We'll have to see how this is going to work out.

So long.