My "helper" is down...!

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Rick_G

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Nov 30, 2007
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Bothwell, Ontario, Canada.
Sorry to hear this George. Will be praying for Merissa and you. Lost my wife of 53 years in April, she had been fighting congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy for 20 years or more. Figure it finally had enough. She was in hospital only 1 day but because of this covid 19 garbage I wasn't allowed in to be with her.
 

sbwertz

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Phoenix, AZ
George, I'm so sorry. And she is probably still off the RA meds so her joints are hurting as well. 41? She's practically a spring chicken!

Praying she doesn't get any hospital acquired infections! Please be careful! Is there someone who could take care of the animals if you stayed in the city for two or three days at a time? I'd be more than willing to chip in toward hotel bills!
 

howsitwork

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Thirsk
George

stay positive mate,

easy to say but difficult to do I know. She's in the best place with the best care and equipment available. Keeping everything crossed for rapid test results and solutions for you both.

Keep,yourself watered and the pets fussed as she would want !

regards Ian
 

greenacres2

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George--there will come a moment that you need a rest. No need to say when that is, simply know that there are many of us here who will lift your weight for an hour, and would be honored to do so. You're in our hearts.
earl
 

robutacion

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Australia - SA Adelaide Hills
George, I'm so sorry. And she is probably still off the RA meds so her joints are hurting as well. 41? She's practically a spring chicken!

Praying she doesn't get any hospital acquired infections! Please be careful! Is there someone who could take care of the animals if you stayed in the city for two or three days at a time? I'd be more than willing to chip in toward hotel bills!
Thanks everybody,

Sharon,

You are a kind lady and I have great respect for you and what you do, I appreciate your offer that no thank you, Adelaide city is still a few long miles from the Flinders hospital with crazy traffic in between so a motel wouldn't be any good for me, we don't have anyone that we could ask and or trust to come into the house to take care of the animals, the last time we tried that years ago it failed miserably so, I prefer to do the drive, however, Merissa knows well how I feel driving so we have agreed that I will see her every second day but we talk on the phone 2 or 3 times daily.

I will be talking to Merissa about lunchtime (my time) so I have no extra news at this point.

Cheers
George
 

robutacion

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Hi friends,

Thank you for all the kind words and thoughts, Merissa is aware of what is going on on this thread and she certainly likes to know she has lots of friends in here, so thank you.

There is not much to add from what I said earlier, Merissa had a fairly quiet day not a lot happening and quite frankly, she was pleased to have the chance to relax and sleep most of the day to recover from 2 days of not sleeping and one of the reasons were 2 other patients from that room of 4 beds that just didn't stop yelling and screaming, fortunately, they both were moved from that room so everybody else can have some rest.

Merissa's body and particularly legs are still very swollen, she is getting injections in her veins to "force" the extra fluids out so poor girl keeps running to the toilet every 5 minutes. The last time she lost 12kg of body weight/fluids in 4 days I suspect she will lose a bit more than that this time while she is in hospital.

Merissa had a video conference this morning with some of the best heart specialists in this state one of them was my own heart specialist of 6 years Professor Dr. Stephen Stranks one of the best we have around, he is taking Merissa's case and I'm most happy that he did, he did wonders with many of my issues that other regular doctors failed top address/resolve in years of trying, unfortunately, Professor Stranks operates privately so, he have to pay for every consultation at $180.00 a shot, this means that for the first year (as it happened to me) she will require a few consultations in one of his private offices but after that, if everything goes right, it goes to 1 month consultations then a 3 month consultations then 6 months and when the issue is stabilised it will be yearly consultations. Merissa mention that in the video conference they discuss a new treatment and said Merissa was an ideal candidate, we are yet to know exactly what it entails but we will in due time.

We still don't know if the heart condition can be treated with drugs or if she will require a surgery procedure, I suppose many of the tests she has done already and some more they will perform in the next days will determine that I hope she doesn't need to go to the knife, she is petrified of that, I have tried multiple times to let her know that surgery is not the end of the world, doctors, equipment and procedures are getting better every year, the risks are very real and so are the people that die from infections created from the surgery that has nothing to do with the problem was in the first place.

Cheers
George
 

howsitwork

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George

Glad to see you keeping her and yourself,positive.

Can you not video conference instead of phone. or is that what you are doing? Maybe put the word out and get a lift in from someone going in to work in Adelaide area ? company for them and you ? From my experiences in your wonderful country it maybe more feasible that's you think ?

Please let her know we are all thinking and rooting for you both.

Cheers Ian
 

robutacion

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George

Glad to see you keeping her and yourself,positive.

Can you not video conference instead of phone. or is that what you are doing? Maybe put the word out and get a lift in from someone going in to work in Adelaide area ? company for them and you ? From my experiences in your wonderful country it maybe more feasible that's you think ?

Please let her know we are all thinking and rooting for you both.

Cheers Ian
G'day Ian,

Thanks for the kind words.

Video chat...? we don't have mobile phones to do that.

Relying on someone else for transport would basically mean being stuck all day in hospital so I prefer to grab to bull by the horns and drive it at least I can stipulate when to leave home and when to leave hospital, of all of my devils, that one is not the worse. :)

Cheers
George
 

howsitwork

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G'day Ian,

Thanks for the kind words.

Video chat...? we don't have mobile phones to do that.

Relying on someone else for transport would basically mean being stuck all day in hospital so I prefer to grab to bull by the horns and drive it at least I can stipulate when to leave home and when to leave hospital, of all of my devils, that one is not the worse. :)

Cheers
George
G'day George

buy her an Ipad they are wonderful and allow you to video call, email etc with ease!

Your australian internet was , when we visited back in 1999 , the most developed we had ever encountered. If I can finally succumb and get an ipad. you should! I found it so useful I bought everyone in the family one . Including the mother in law ( net result we have a spare ipad as she tried multiple guesses at her pass work set up by my youngest son then gave up) temporarily anyway.

You can then see each other daily as well,as call in every other day. It will also,allow her to see you are feeding the animals and yourself !

seriously mate if you can afford it do it.

Stay safe

Ian
 

robutacion

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G'day George

buy her an Ipad they are wonderful and allow you to video call, email etc with ease!

Your australian internet was , when we visited back in 1999 , the most developed we had ever encountered. If I can finally succumb and get an ipad. you should! I found it so useful I bought everyone in the family one . Including the mother in law ( net result we have a spare ipad as she tried multiple guesses at her pass work set up by my youngest son then gave up) temporarily anyway.

You can then see each other daily as well,as call in every other day. It will also,allow her to see you are feeding the animals and yourself !

seriously mate if you can afford it do it.

Stay safe

Ian
Hi Ian,

I appreciate your effort to help, thank you.

I use my camera to take a few short videos of the pets, she always asks to see them as she misses feeding them (Mama think) and their interactions. She keeps asking to bring stuff to her so I have to make the trip, anyway.

Merissa is not a computer person, she doesn't touch them even though I tried to teach her in the beginning when we met but she simply doesn't like it, she is happy with all the things I do on the computer but not for her, she gets pretty stressed out trying to work out how to make them work and the same happened when I got her a "normal" mobile phone just for emergency situations, she didn't like it and she didn't know how to deal with all the messages popping out all the time so I decided to buy a prepaid old-style flip phone, there is nothing extra on that phone to keep things easy and I got it set-up so that she turns it on when needed, to answer the call (always me) she only need to flip the top part of the phone and to make a call, she has a list of all possible numbers she may need, she clicks on the one she wants and the phone takes care of the rest, simple.

The cost of having either 2 mobile phones or Ipads/tablets with video chat capabilities is high and the plans to keep each one operation would be a minimum of $60 per month for each so, no thank you...! There is also the fact that Merissa won't be in hospital forever after she comes out all those things would be useless to us while having to pay each month regardless if used or not.

Cheers
George
 

howsitwork

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fair points mate.

Just thinking about how long it took me to try it and then never looked back.

Only just started trying video conferencing though, no choice with covid !

Stay safe and well

Ian
 

sbwertz

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Phoenix, AZ
You can buy an old refurbished IPad Air for about $135..that is what I have. If you use the internet instead of cell, there is no monthly fee except for your standard internet fee. I'm a computer consultant, and I have set up IPads, sort of like her phone. Just a few essential icons, touch one and it works. Most of my clients are non-computer literate seniors. (I'm trying to retire, but the only way I will ever be able to retire is to outlive them! They panic every time I say the R word.)
 

robutacion

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Aug 6, 2009
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Australia - SA Adelaide Hills
Good news, Merissa is home...! :)

After 1 week at the Flinder Hospital, Merissa heard that she may come home on the weekend so that made her happy but somehow, they decided to transfer her from Flinders to the Victor Harbour private hospital on Friday night about 10:00pm for what we thought would be a 2 days stay I was surprised when Merissa call me on Saturday middle morning to let me know she has been discharged and she was ready to come home.

Sure, I was happy but at the same time I wondered why in the heck would they transfer Merissa to another hospital just for a sleep...? strange...!

Anyway, it has been worked out that Merissa still has fluid in her lungs a lot less than the last time but still not clear, the discussion and tests performed on Merissa's heart show she had a good/strong heart so it boils down to the fluids Merissa's body can't get rid off together with excess body weight these 2 factors are restricting the heart and the lungs to pump properly.

Unfortunately, a lot of the medications Merissa has been taking for her RA condition are contributing to her put on considerable weight, the last time Merissa was hospitalised, they manage to remove 12kg of body weight all fluids in 4 days but this time they struggle to get the intravenous injections to force fluids out did not work much for the first 3.5 days she only lost 3kg so they decided to double possibly triple the amount of those injections and all of a certain the fluids started to come out fairly easily.

When Merissa was discharged yesterday her body weight was 116kg compared to 137kg 8 days prior, that's a lot of fluids and more has still to come out so is on some tablets to should continue to make her lose fluids together with some restrictions on what she can eat and certainly the continuation of the liquid intake restriction of 1.5litre per day. Somehow, when Merissa left the hospital the last time, no one has said to Merissa that she needed to continue that liquid intake restriction amount at home and that is the cause of her need hospitalisation for the second time in such a few weeks, I never have seen anyone drink as much water as Merissa does regardless in Summer or Winter, I keep telling her that she drinks water like Camels, we all know that the human body needs water, the daily average water intake recommended is far beyond my capabilities, most liquids I drink in a day are coffee and maybe 1/4 litre of water or soft drink while Merissa will drink 5 litres of water a day in average, sometimes more...!:oops: (yeah, I think the same...)

Anyway, the "Queen" is home enjoying the company of the pets that she missed badly and back to her/our very modest "nest" but one that we enjoy immensely.

Oh...! almost forgot, Merissa is not on oxygen during the day unless she feels the need for it, at night the concentrator oxygen supply will continue connected to her CPAP machine/mask that is now set to 20 instead of 10, being able to go to the shops without dragging the oxygen trolley with her is something that pleases her considerably but all the equipment stays with us for some more time just in case she will need it again, will see.

That's all the news for now, lets hope Merissa can continue losing body fluids and body fat, her legs/knees would benefit greatly from less weight to carry around, in the meantime I will continue to be as supportive as I can be.

Cheers
George
 
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