Monday, November 07, 2005

Hello from Ohio

Remember a couple of posts ago when I mentioned that one of the nice things about RVing is that one doesn't have to rake leaves? Well, do I have leaves to rake here at Mom's! I guess the good news is that there are enough fall colored leaves left to enjoy and that raking leaves will provide the exercise I'll miss by not having a swimming pool handy for water aerobics. The old "one door opens when the other closes" type of thinking, right?

Took Mom to the doctor today. Mediocre news/bad news. Bad news; the doctor doesn't accept Mom's Anthem Senior Advantage as she was told by the Urgent Care folks when they arranged her appointment. Mom and the doctor agreed that Mom would pay the full cost of the visit if the doctor would do a basic exam and prescribe some high blood pressure meds if that was what was needed. Mom did have another nose bleed episode at 2:30 this morning. Her blood pressure was still extremely elevated, so rather than play a waiting game with Anthem trying to get better coverage, the doctor made an end run by setting up a couple of appointments with specialists for further testing after comfirming with them herself that they did, indeed, accept Anthem Senior patients. Whew. It seems that old age, smoking, winter conditions and some kidney problems can cause sudden high blood pressure but otherwise her heart sounds good. So there's some small relief there. But the bottom line is that as of today, we still don't know what's causing the sudden, copious nose bleeds.

A family friend dropped off a blood pressure cuff tonight and I retook Mom's blood pressure and discovered it had gone down quite a bit. I also bought a vaporizor for her bedroom for additional moisture so we'll see how it all goes. Bending over brings on the spurts and she's weak from the loss of blood, so we'll work on doing all her chores to avoid setting off nose bleeds and trying to get good healthy meals in her belly to build her blood back up.

In terms of the blog, our laptop had to be taken to CompUSA for repairs and won't be done for a week or two, so no pictures here unless I feel ambitious enough to download the required programs onto Mom's computer. That may yet happen. And if the nosebleeds stop before bad weather really sets in here in Ohio we may just drag Mom out to do some geocaching as she's fascinated by the concept. If so, I'll have to get pictures of that to share, won't I?

In the meantime, here's where we are now Safe travels to those on the road.

No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...