Day five after biopsy: Still no results.
Took Dad for his regular labwork Wednesday morning. Got that drawn, went on a couple errands, came back to the house (I’m writing this at the house; I won’t upload it from the house), puttered about, and suddenly the phone’s frantic. It was Aunt Matilda wanting to know had Dad heard from his clinic because they saw a lab result that worried them and they wanted him to go to the ER.
So we went to the ER. We were there for long enough that he told me I may as well get supper and go home. I figured he was right because if it had been any sort of a “not big deal” thing, I felt like they’d have sent him home already, so like as not they would admit him. I was right. Not only did they admit him, they sent his ass to Crowley, which has a larger hospital in the same system.
Aunt Matilda and I chatted a little before then and I always get this vibe like she’s holding me out at arm’s length, which would sort of fit what’s gone on so far, but at the same time neither of us even hinted at hostile — or I like to think I didn’t, since I wasn’t trying. But we’re both at the point that with him and drinking we might as well just let him do whatever since he’d have to be the one to decide to quit anyway. He did make some progress though. He admitted to them he’d had alcohol. Last time I heard a medical person ask him about drinking he claimed he wasn’t, and I knew for a fact he was. Maybe he’s coming to some sort of peace about it too. Who knows.
Anyway so he was hospitalized from Wednesday evening until Friday morning. This is going to sound awful and there is nothing I can do about it; I’m often an open book and sometimes people don’t like to read it. But it was nice to have that little bit of time. By the second day into it I figured he was going to be okay anyhow. No one interrupting my movie (I don’t mean talking to me, which is fine; I mean changing the fucking channel, which is not), I could shower without being afraid he’d have to pee or worse, I got to sleep all the way through the night without massive TV noise, and so on. I’m glad he’s back now, but if we could be like in both sides of the same duplex, that would be ideal. It won’t happen, I’m just saying.
(A further note about the TV thing. I never fuss at him. It’s his TV, it’s his satellite subscription, and I am a guest here. I get it. It’s just, as objectively as manners ever can be, fucking rude to change what someone’s watching when most of the time you get to pick anyway. Just wanted to be clear where I was coming from.)
I wasn’t sure what was up from what they said in the ER versus what they said later but it sounds like he needs to up his baking-soda-pill dose. Not even kidding. The paperwork said acidosis. They had worried about ketoacidosis, the dangerous kind (there are two kinds), in the ER but it sounds like it was just his kidneys not doing what they were supposed to do which, he’s in stage three failure so that’s kind of a given. So it was urgent but not a really really really bad emergency. But still something they had needed to monitor. He also needs to get off his potassium supplement, so that was interesting.
No need for dialysis though. Not yet, anyway.
Now, while all that was going on, I was sitting in his room on I think Thursday and started poking around in the MyOschner app to see if my biopsy results were back. Not only aren’t they back, I found my EKG from the preadmission screening for my colonoscopy which, I will remind, took place two Tuesdays ago, so the preadmit would have been the week prior. So, by this point, two and a half weeks gone and no one has called me. Why would they need to call me? Oh, I had an abnormal fucking EKG. In fact, the EKG indicates I had an infarct. That’s right. A heart attack. Apparently occurring at the bottom of the heart structure. The indicators also go along with a certain artery getting clogged. None of this surprises me overmuch; I have neglected my health for years and I expected some kind of consequence. What surprises me is that this literally says something bad happened to my heart that in turn makes it much more likely something worse will happen, and here we are a week and a half after finding out about this and NO ONE HAS CALLED ME ABOUT IT. It makes me wonder if they will even mention it at my followup with my PCP on the 8th. Well I’m sure going to fucking mention it. I want a stress test. I want to know what my options are.
Such horseshit.
I’m curious whether keto is cardioprotective even after something has happened. I’m sure going to fucking find out when I get the chance. One more reason to go back to it.
But I can sort of narrow down when this might have happened. I haven’t felt right in the general area of my heart for literal years. To be more precise, probably since 2020. Possibly worse after I caught COVID in ’22, but I can’t be sure. The unbelievable amount of stress everyone and everything put me through where I literally had to run away to get any relief and it still wasn’t enough. One of the sources I read about this particular pattern of infarct says broken-heart syndrome can bring it on. I mean, who fucking knows.
I have said multiple times, mostly to myself, that Matt better keep his ass in Colorado. Never come back east, for sure. I never said I was here in Louisiana forever. I will probably never see this as home. The place I DO see as home is my fucking turf and he can just stay away until the universe fucking dies. Stealing twenty years of my life, ruining basically everything and going “oh but here’s a car and a bunch of art supplies you have no room for” and then disappearing with my last child like I wasn’t going to notice. Fuck that guy. I want to run him over with a truck and THEN kick him off a skyscraper. Fucking WATCH me.
(I will tell you a secret, which will mean it isn’t a secret anymore: When I think about what I’d do if I ever won one of those billion-dollar Powerballs? I’d buy the fucking red house, is what I would do. I’d make it AWESOME and then spend my old age in it. And if he ever came around, I’d answer the fucking door. Just to see his stupid fucking face before I pepper-spray it.)
(I was going to say something worse, but fuck all y’all. You’d like that, WOULDN’T YOU.)
Some part of me hopes there’s a benign explanation that I just haven’t found. To be fair, I did not dig very far because what I was seeing in the search results was freaking me out enough. Not even mommy blogs. Actual sciencey-mediciney sites. But I guess we will see. I did have a dizzy spell at Super One a few weeks back when Dad and I were in Crowley shopping. I’ve had other stuff going on that I really couldn’t pin down. Having an explanation would be nice, even if it’s bad news.
Dad for his part is doing a lot better. I’m learning that when he is feeling bad, not only does he slow way down and need more help, his voice goes really quiet. If I see that again I’m suggesting a visit to his nurse practitioner, minimum. If he says no off the bat I’m bringing Carrie into it. The sooner we jump on that shit and solve it, the less time he might have to spend in the hospital. After the fit he threw over the poor quality of his meals, maybe that’ll get through to him. But for now, he’s got a lot more oomph than he did at the beginning of the week.
Metabolic acidosis. Who knew. I already couldn’t take the alkaline-diet people seriously. I take them even less seriously now. As in less than zero. Morons, you will know if you “go acidic.” Fucking trust me.