Tuesday, June 22

Up at 6:30, so Hubbie would have time to take care of the kittens with the eye problems, walk Shih Tzu, and fill the bird feeders, etc., before he left on a trip about 45 minutes from here to visit with his family. I needed time to check on Mother and see to her needs before I went to a 9:30 cardiologist appointment.

Since Mother has not been eating much, she was having tummy troubles. I had the necessary product on hand to help relieve her. I called the clinic and left a message with her doctor's nurse, but didn't get a return call before I needed to leave for my appointment.

My cardiologist appointment went well. I was a little taken aback, however, when I was escorted back to an exam room past a room where a woman was screaming and crying like a little child. The nurse said it was an elderly woman who didn't appreciate the insertion of an intravenous needle. I asked if the woman had dementia or Alzheimer's, and she nodded yes.

When we entered the exam room, the nurse asked me to strip to the waist and put on a gown. "What are you going to do?" I laughed, remembering the elderly lady's cries. The nurse explained that she was going to do an echocardiogram (ultrasound) of my heart, since it had been a year since the last one.

This is a painless procedure, except for the sometimes slight discomfort of the scanning instrument that the nurse manipulates around the chest and on the rib cage. I thought she'd never quit bearing down on that rib under my left breast. Apparently, it's difficult to get a good image of the heart through that rib and the lung.

By the time the test was completed...about 30 minutes, and then another nurse spent 20 minutes filling out forms and taking my blood pressure, and then I waited another 30 minutes before the doctor came in, it was around 11:30 before I got back home.

I learned a lot about each of these caretakers. The nurse who did the ultrasound was married at 16, and had her first child at 17. Now she had 11 grandchildren. One daughter is an emergency room nurse, and her son is career military, currently serving in Iraq.

The other nurse was frazzled today, since some folks didn't show up for work, and she was the only nurse in that part of the clinic. She also has rhumatoid arthritis, which was bothering her today. She's also worried about her 73-year-old mother, who is bent on dying. I mentioned that she is too young to think about dying, but the nurse said that there are folks who are young at 73, and folks who are old at that age, and her Mother is one of the old ones.

The doctor had her own tales...she is a very large person, who is having knee problems. Our conversation, though, mainly centered on her porch garden...herbs and okra plants in containers. Like all of us, she's having trouble in this extreme heat keeping her plants hydrated.

As for me, I appear to be in good shape, and will not need another appointment until next June. Yay!

Back home, I checked on Mother. She hadn't eaten much. I asked if she'd like to try to come over to my house, and she said she would. She's been craving "something creamy" to eat, so I researched the info on her antibiotic and learned that she isn't restricted from eating dairy products...the only caution is not to eat or drink dairy when taking her medication.

So I gave her an individual cup of chocolate pudding, and then made a batch of macaroni and cheese, and she ate a serving of that, plus some bread and butter.

Hubbie returned home around 4 p.m. At that time, Mother was ready to go back to her house. She made it fine, without visible dizziness. The nurse at the clinic called back around 5 p.m. saying the doctor doesn't feel she needs to see Mother just yet. She emphasized that Mother needs to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, and then after she finishes the med, she wants to see her again. So it'll be next week before she goes back to the doctor, unless something unusual happens.

I checked on her around 8 p.m., and she seemed to be feeling better. She said she wasn't getting as dizzy when she walked, so maybe she's mending.