Yesterday, Dad wasn’t feeling well for awhile.
His blood pressure was about 90/40 and his heart rate was about 40 beats per minute. Both those readings are very low. We double checked with two different meters, so it wasn’t faulty equipment giving bad readings.
He was looking pale and was weak and confused and angry.
He has a pacemaker that’s never supposed to let his heart rate go below 60 beats per minute, so a 40 beat per minute reading means, I think, either a malfunction of the pacemaker or a malfunction of Dad’s heart.
So I told him he was going to the Emergency Room.
Now for some background.
Dad has been increasingly a couch potato. He absolutely refuses to go out to walk most of the time unless I push him hard, and he gets very grumpy and angry and verbally abusive when I try to get him to do something all his doctors have been insisting he does.
He’s been eating very poorly, letting very fatty and artery clogging foods.
Recently he’s had several periods of brief blindness, where the vision in one of his eyes will go to zero for several minutes. Coincidently, it’s never happened while I’ve been home.
He’s also had several periods of sudden dizzyness, and a few days ago, he fell in the bathroom, fortunately falling against the sink and only having a bad bruise instead of a broken hip. More fortunately, I was home and awake at 3 am to help him get up or he might have fallen the rest of the way to the floor as he couldn’t get up by himself.
Dad told his doctor about this and his doctor immediately had him schedule for an ultrasound exam of his neck. The results were forwarded to his surgeon, Dr. Calzetta, the same guy who took out a piece of his lung cancer a few years ago. Dr. Calzetta said that Dad “flunked” the exam as it showed his carodic arteries, which feed blood to his brain, were becoming blocked, and the periodic blindness events were likely a result of that.
Dad was sent out for a more accurate test, a CAT scan using a contrast dye. Unfortunately, a blood test showed that Dad’s kidneys were not good enough to deal with the dye, which is rather toxic even for a good kidney.
Tomorrow Dad and I are going back to Dr. Calzetta to see what happens next.
The blockages in Dad’s carodic arteries is a big problem. About ten years ago, he had surgery, done by Dr. Calzetta, to cut open his neck and clean out his right Carodic artery. However, Dr. Calzetta thinks Dad is too weak to handle surgery. During recovery from the Lung Cancer Surgery a couple years ago, Dad nearly died, and Dr. Calzetta said he will never perform another surgery on Dad again. So the probable treatment will probably be drugs, exercise and diet adjustment. Diet will be hard because Dad has absolutely no clue about what foods contain what. For example, I’ve tried to explain carbs to him many times, but he never remembers.
The blockage of his Carodic arteries, if it’s indeed as severe as we now believe, means that Dad is much more likely to suffer a stroke. From what I know, I’m afraid that this means that for Dad the end may come suddenly and unexpectedly, and even if he doesn’t die from an initial stroke, his mental ability will likely be gone and he may be a shell before his body goes.
Yesterday morning, I saw Dad lying in bed, still, silent, with no sign of motion nor sign of breathing, and not using his oxygen nor CPAP sleep machine. I watched and could not see anything for about 60 seconds, and I reached out to shake him, and I was sure he would be cold and stiff. Fortunately, he wasn’t, but for a few seconds, I was sure I was an orphan.
So back to taking Dad to the ER Story:
When Dad told me how low his Blood Pressure and Heart Rate was, I told him to get dressed and he was going to the ER. Dad wasn’t happy, as he has never wanted to go the Emergency room, no matter how sick or injured he was. He was pale and confused and looked terrible, but he kept coming up with excuses why he wasn’t going, even getting complaining about the cost of going to the ER, which was a bogus excuse because Dad has such great insurance that he hasn’t paid a medical bill in decades, and was also a symptom of his mental confusion as he knows that.
So I left him in the living room to get ready and went back in 10 minutes expecting to find him dressed, but he was still sitting there in his underwear looking very ill.
I told him that if he didn’t get dressed in the car, I was going to call an ambulance. I did that once before several years ago when he was very sick, and he probably wouldn’t be alive today if I hadn’t. Dad started screaming at me, being very abusive and angry and making very little sense.
Finally I got him dressed and out to the car and we started off to the Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital.
On the way there, Dad said he was feeling much better. As we approached the hospital he seemed much less confused and his color was better, so I said we’d go back to the house, check his Blood Pressure and Heart Rate, and if they weren’t significantly better, we’d get back into the car and return.
His blood pressure was almost normal, and his heart rate was up over 50, better but not where it should be, but I decided not to take him back right away. Over the next couple of hours his readings got better and the crisis was over for the moment.
jtg