Back in the ER

Well ... this morning its like Mom drove off a cliff. She slept in the lift chair again and seemed to sleep ok ... but this morning she was pale and having trouble breathing. (My guess is anemia or pneumonia at this point - but I ain't the doctor). We cancel the follow-up appointment with the rehab doctor scheduled for 9:30am. Then placed a call into Dr. Thomas. We headed to MD Anderson and arrived just in time for Mom's follow-up meeting with Dr. Ting (Pain). As we walked in they took Mom's vitals ... not good! -- very low blood pressure and low saturation level (80ish). Dr. Ting read the x-rays and no more fractures. The clavicle is weakened by the myeloma but it is not fractured and the same holds true for all of the ribs. He even looked at the chest x-ray and (YAHOO!) no pnuemonia -- her chest x-ray was completely clear.

So we were off to the ER. Nothing gets you into an ER faster than shortness of breath plus Mom's heart rate was over 200 so they thought she was having a heart attack. Of course ... I was calm so they most likely thought I was some heartless daughter but I explained that Mom has an irregular heart beat. They still did the EKG which was fine and as soon as they gave her oxygen her heart rate calmed down.

They gave her a xopenex treatment (breathing) and increased her oxygen level several times until they got her to 100. They have repeated the chest x-ray and they have taken a ton of blood. Funny thing -- they took all kinds of blood to grow cultures last night but they did not do the standard CVC which will tell us Mom's hemoglobin level. Since the last chest x-ray was taken around 7pm last night I doubt anything has changed -- but they have to rule it out.

Her PICC line did not work instantly for the blood draw so the IV team was called to review it. It worked fine for the IV team and now we are waiting for them to give Mom some fluids. They have tried twice to get some artery blood ... failing the first time as they hit a vein. Not sure if it worked the second time or not.

We have been left alone for a bit and Mom is sleeping. Her heart rate is down and her sats are 100 (but that is still with lots of oxygen). I am betting that they are waiting for the results of blood and x-ray before anything else happens. If I had to guess ... Mom is most has anemia which can cause shortness of breath. If that is true it will take 4 to 6 hours for them to "type" her blood as they have to do it 2 or 3 times for myeloma patients then depending on how much she needs it will take several hours for it to go in.

They just arrived with fluids. Gotta run.