Thursday, February 25, 2016

Today

This morning I was feeling very upbeat about seeing the doctor today (appointment was for 2:45). Also, I got a call this morning from the guy at the University and he gave me a few places to call for a widow/widower support group. I'll make those calls tomorrow.

At 1:00 the doctor's office called to say that Dr. Pacheco had an emergency and they needed to cancel the appointment and he didn't have another opening for a week. I kind of lost it and burst into tears. She said she would keep me posted if the doctor got back to the office.

When I calmed down, I called her back and asked if I could come in anyway and see the nurse to get my INR blood work done. And I reminded her that they were supposed to "interrogate" my pacemaker today. She told me to come on in.

My INR was 2.7 and the nurse said that was good.

The pacemaker rep did the interrogation of the pacemaker and ran a few tests and then said he had to go call the doctor. I asked him if he made any adjustments to the pacemaker and I can't remember what he said -- I've got to clarify that tomorrow.

Anyway, he came back in and asked if I could wait around for a few hours because the doctor needed to see me. That couldn't be good. The rep said that one of the leads on the pacemaker had gotten a little loose and it looked like I needed to have another surgery to have a new pacemaker implanted. Just what I wanted to hear...

So the doctor got back around 4:30 and he took a look at the interrogation report and examined me and here's how he explained it (Or at least the way I interpreted what he said): One of the reasons I am having some of the problems I've been having is because of this loose lead. It's causing a bit of shakiness. And he said that this situation can be caused simply by the body's attempt to accept this foreign object and that it is possible it can right itself so he wants to see me in two more weeks to check it out again and we can hope I will not need the surgery.

But if we do need to do the surgery, he said, it's best to do it now and get it over with before things get too settled in the body. The longer we wait the harder it would be to remove whatever needs to be removed which would make it a more extensive surgery. I'm not sure if I got all of that right, but that's the way I understood it.

So I go back in two weeks to see what the future holds.

I talked to the doctor about the dizziness and the numbness I've been having and asked if it could be related to the Afib medications which he had increased over what I had been taking when I left the hospital and I told him that it seems like those symptoms are the main side effects listed for these medications. He said he did not think these medications caused any of my symptoms -- he thinks it is more likely to be me still getting used to the pacemaker. I asked him if I could decrease these medications to see how it goes and he gave me permission to cut down the Flecainide from 150mg twice a day to 75mg twice a day but not the Metoprolol. He said he didn't want to lower them both at once. So we will see how that goes.

The doctor saw that my INR reading was 2.7 and he said he'd rather see it at 2.5 (even though his nurse told me it should be between 2 and 3) so I have a new goal.

Now I really need to be sure I find a pet-sitter, don't I?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

1 comment:

  1. Oh Marilyn, I hate to hear all this. No wonder you have been feeling so badly and certainly even depressed.

    I hope you find a group to connect with soon or maybe just make a new friend. I will send good thoughts your way, Terri

    ReplyDelete