My mom was admitted to the hospital again Wednesday night (February 28, 2007)...well really Thursday February March 1st at 2am). She had an appt. with the Cardiac Nurse Practitioner who took care of her in the ICU back when she had her heart attack, for a follow-up. My mom also had some labs done for an upcoming doctor appt. on the same day. I got a call on Wed night (the 28th) from what seemed to be a doctor on call for my mom's PCP. He said to get my mom to the ER right away because my mom's Potassium and Calcium levels were dangerously elevated. I picked her up got her there around 9:30pm or so and left around 2am the ER when they finally decided to admit her (or realized the doctor was going to admit her). She didn't get a bed until about 5:30am Thurs morning. They gave her meds those levels down.
I called the nurse practitioner about my mom being admitted Thursday the 1st and she actually called me back around 6pm (some of these people are so great). I wanted to let her know what was going on. Those levels can be elevated because of my mom's hyperparathyroidism. The doctor at the hospital told my mom she should get the parathyroid removed right away but my mom told him about her heart surgery just last month and that it was too soon. She said she would not do anything unless he talked to me first because she wasn't sure about how that worked with her just having the surgery. He was all..."it's your life, you should be able to choose." So he called me I explained to him the situation. The nurse practitioner wanted her to wait 6 months to see if her heart would be okay to withstand the parathyroid operation. But when I talked to the nurse practitioner Thursday the 1st, she said that if it's an emergency, my mom needs to stay on her blood thinners if she needs to have it taken out right away. Another option was to wait 3 months for her to stay on her blood thinners before doing the surgery. At best, we wanted to wait wait until she has a heart stress test in 6 months (that would be May) to make sure she's okay to have the surgery and not need the stent put in her right artery (that was our original plan until these test results came up).
It's so frustrating; I don't know what to do. Having it done soon is scary, but if it is going to keep making her sick, it needs to be done. She's at the point where she just wants to get it over with, but her body has been through so much in the last month. The doctor was ready to do it Thursday morning. He was being very pushy, saying that the parathyroid was slowly killing her...it is damaging her organs...it's what made her have to have her kidney out, gallbladder out, contributed to osteoporosis, compression fractures in her back, keeps her calcium levels too high, is disrupting her other kidney function, may be hurting her heart, possibly her liver...who knows what else. I don't want her to end up on dialysis or worse. But at the same time I don't want it to be too soon for her body to undergo something like this. She should have had it removed long ago. Maybe she never would have gotten so sick if she would have gotten it taken out a few years ago, but I never knew about it back then. I regret that every day.
So I really don't know what to do. We'll have to see if they can keep the levels down, but they are still also worried about her heart. She has been having some chest pains, I guess all along after she had the operation, but didn't really say anything to me. If she has them, she is supposed to take some nitroglycerine right away and she wasn't...she wasn't sure when she was supposed to be taking them and the nurse said, when she has the symptoms my mom described to the nurse, that's when she needs to take them. She has been given a paste form of it several times a day to be on the safe side, but my mom has pills that she is supposed to place under her tongue when she has chest pain. It just helps to prevent a heart attack if chest pains start to occur by dilating the blood vessels.
I called the nurse practitioner about my mom being admitted Thursday the 1st and she actually called me back around 6pm (some of these people are so great). I wanted to let her know what was going on. Those levels can be elevated because of my mom's hyperparathyroidism. The doctor at the hospital told my mom she should get the parathyroid removed right away but my mom told him about her heart surgery just last month and that it was too soon. She said she would not do anything unless he talked to me first because she wasn't sure about how that worked with her just having the surgery. He was all..."it's your life, you should be able to choose." So he called me I explained to him the situation. The nurse practitioner wanted her to wait 6 months to see if her heart would be okay to withstand the parathyroid operation. But when I talked to the nurse practitioner Thursday the 1st, she said that if it's an emergency, my mom needs to stay on her blood thinners if she needs to have it taken out right away. Another option was to wait 3 months for her to stay on her blood thinners before doing the surgery. At best, we wanted to wait wait until she has a heart stress test in 6 months (that would be May) to make sure she's okay to have the surgery and not need the stent put in her right artery (that was our original plan until these test results came up).
It's so frustrating; I don't know what to do. Having it done soon is scary, but if it is going to keep making her sick, it needs to be done. She's at the point where she just wants to get it over with, but her body has been through so much in the last month. The doctor was ready to do it Thursday morning. He was being very pushy, saying that the parathyroid was slowly killing her...it is damaging her organs...it's what made her have to have her kidney out, gallbladder out, contributed to osteoporosis, compression fractures in her back, keeps her calcium levels too high, is disrupting her other kidney function, may be hurting her heart, possibly her liver...who knows what else. I don't want her to end up on dialysis or worse. But at the same time I don't want it to be too soon for her body to undergo something like this. She should have had it removed long ago. Maybe she never would have gotten so sick if she would have gotten it taken out a few years ago, but I never knew about it back then. I regret that every day.
So I really don't know what to do. We'll have to see if they can keep the levels down, but they are still also worried about her heart. She has been having some chest pains, I guess all along after she had the operation, but didn't really say anything to me. If she has them, she is supposed to take some nitroglycerine right away and she wasn't...she wasn't sure when she was supposed to be taking them and the nurse said, when she has the symptoms my mom described to the nurse, that's when she needs to take them. She has been given a paste form of it several times a day to be on the safe side, but my mom has pills that she is supposed to place under her tongue when she has chest pain. It just helps to prevent a heart attack if chest pains start to occur by dilating the blood vessels.
What's really hard is that when she was discharged after she had the heart attack last month, she was sent him with home with SO MANY meds…something like 12. I swear she takes half of the meds that are in the pharmacy. And she was also told her to start eating a sodium-free, low cholesterol diet, and was given a long list of foods she could no longer eat, and a smaller list of foods that she can east. So that really limits what she can eat, and I find it hard to find foods that she can have that have flavor but still have enough to keep weight on her. She should weigh more than she does to have some cushion in case she gets sick again. This second time around, when she was discharged, she was sent her home with 1 or 2 different meds and taken off of some of her other meds. She was also told that she now had to cut potassium out of her diet, with a whole other list of foods she can't eat. It is so frustrating trying to find the right foods and put together a good diet for her. I am still working on that.
So it seems they are concerned about her heart and her Calcium and Potassium Levels. Her heartbeat is irregular as well. When I talked to the Cardio nurse, she checked into the hospital computer and said they were getting the levels down pretty well so hopefully they will stay down. My worry is that they'll go back up after she leaves the hospital! I'm just...I don't know what to do but ultimately it is my mom's decision. I just want her to know what goes into making that decision. I have to stop making her decisions for her. I think she relies on me because I step in…I get afraid of what will happen to her when instead I need to let her do what she wants. I just worry that she doesn't have enough info or understand the info well enough, and she is tired of being in the hospital and just wants to have everything done and over with!
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