It wouldn’t surprise me if Jeff asked Santa Claus for a break from doctor visits for the holiday season. We cancelled his December 29th appointment with the family doctor because the abdominal pain that hung on for at least two months (before and after the hospital stay for chicken pox) seems to have abated.
Visits
to the kidney specialist and the gastroenterologist – bad news and good news
respectively – closed out the year 2016.
For some reason, we both had been experiencing some anxiety about these
visits. Sometimes we are able to take
the uncertainties in stride and sometimes they get the better of us.
Jeff is
officially old. We had to buy a blood
pressure cuff for when the Lisinopril – which has been increased to 15mg a day
(from 10) – makes him dizzy. His blood
pressure tends to be low and with an ACE inhibitor, it is even lower. This medication is supposed to help the
proteinuria but after the last dosage increase his urine protein was higher
instead of lower.
Patients
with proteinuria, according to Kidney Specialist Dr. Carpenter, fall into one
of three buckets: one – it goes away,
two – it stays the same, or three – it progresses and can eventually cause kidney failure. Dr. Carpenter didn’t want to
say which bucket Jeff fits in. I asked
if we could choose. Another urine test
in a month will tell us whether a referral to a city doctor is in order.
During
Jeff’s hospital stay in November he’d had an irregular heart beat and he passed
out in the ER so an echocardiogram was ordered as a precaution. All good there! The cardiologist noted Jeff’s low pulse, “Like
an Olympic athlete!” Since then Jeff has
often reminded me (with a weak voice while falling asleep sitting up in a
chair) that he has “the heart of an Olympic athlete and the body of an
80-year-old.” He’s so cute.
Gastroenterologist
Dr. Frank had good news for Jeff. A
follow-up colonoscopy after last year’s removal of a “very large, precancerous
polyp” revealed only one small polyp - which was also removed. And he heard the words he so hoped to hear,
“Come back in five years.” Joy!!!
He was
not, however, able to pop up and leave right after his procedure. When his nurse showed me to the recovery area
I noticed his blood pressure was 73/58.
I thought maybe I was reading the wrong area of the digital screen. Nope.
The nurse told me it had been lower and it was slowly coming up. He couldn’t leave until his blood pressure
was at least 100/xx. It went up to 85
which Jeff attributed to seeing me (he’s such a charmer). After awhile of slow progress, the nurse suggested a little walk. He was dizzy but the walk did the trick. It went up to 99 and then 101! Home Ho!
On the
way home we saw Neighbor Carmen outside and asked her about her husband - and the
ambulance we’d recently seen at their house.
He has had a couple of falls from which he could not right himself. Jeff offered to rake the leaves in their
front yard. Although he wasn’t supposed
to work the day he’d had anesthesia, he went right over to do as he
promised. I thought helping a neighbor
might wait for another day. Silly
me.
Jeff
winks his bad eye closed when he finds his poor vision particularly
annoying. He does this far less
frequently than he did right after his cataract surgery and complains about it
far less often. He must be getting used
to it.
