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ProfessorTomoe

Changing Medications (Level of Trust Required)

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The 125mg 2x a day dose of Diamox diuretic has stopped working. I've gained 17 pounds of fluid weight.  Not having any fun from this. I've sent a message to my doctor about it - should hear from him tomorrow morning. I hope it's not with a reply of "go to the ER."

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10 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

The 125mg 2x a day dose of Diamox diuretic has stopped working. I've gained 17 pounds of fluid weight.  Not having any fun from this. I've sent a message to my doctor about it - should hear from him tomorrow morning. I hope it's not with a reply of "go to the ER."

Damn.  Hope they get that resolved ASAP.

 

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Dang, Prof, you are getting RAPID weight changes. Seventeen pounds in less than a week, it looks like; eleven pounds in a few days, earlier. The varying stress on your body from the weight fluctuation is worrying, as well as what's causing it.

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Just now, Don Edwards said:

Dang, Prof, you are getting RAPID weight changes. Seventeen pounds in less than a week, it looks like; eleven pounds in a few days, earlier. The varying stress on your body from the weight fluctuation is worrying, as well as what's causing it.

You should see what it's doing to the skin around my ankles. Flakes, flakes everywhere. My podiatrist wants me to use moisturizer, but the flakes are so big it's hard to grasp what to moisturize.

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14 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

My doctor increased my Diamox dosage to 250mg 2x a day every other day. So, M-W-F this week. Still waiting for it to kick in (I took it rather late.)

Let's hope that works.

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I have a normal "both side of the head, not a migraine" headache.  Going to take my tension headache meds and lay down for a while.  If I keep to normal I'll fall asleep after an hour or two, thereby mangling my sleep schedule.

 

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My, my, what's this? I'm in the hospital. Again. For this:

20220512_091743_resize_1.jpg

The redness is a skin infection called cellulitis. I'm on Rocephin and vancomycin antibiotics for it. They're attacking the cellulitis more strongly than they are the swelling for now.

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You seem to have the worst luck.  While they are treating the cellulitis more are they at least keeping you on the diuretics?    Keep us posted!

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I'm on a new IV diuretic called Bumex. Not too high of a dose, since my blood pressure is kind of low. As a result, I'm not pissing a lot.

The doctor says I'm going to be here through the weekend.

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22 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

The doctor says I'm going to be here through the weekend.

That sucks. Are they at least giving you pain meds?

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8 hours ago, mlooney said:

That sucks. Are they at least giving you pain meds?

Yeah, they've got me on 1mg Dilaudid every 4 hours as needed. It knocks down the arm pain a notch (example: pain without Dilaudid=8, with Dilaudid=7), and it lasts for on average 3 of the 4 hours. That's on top of my standard oxycodone.

On the antibiotic front, they had to take me off of the vancomycin and put me on something in a blue capsule (don't know what). A measurement called the "vancomycin trough" went over the safe limit in my blood tests, so they had to discontinue it. (Too much vancomycin is toxic.)

They've also discontinued my blood pressure medication, saying that my blood pressure is too low. A doctor (don't remember which) said I need a higher blood pressure to help pump the fluids out of my leg. Go figure.

I'm not sleeping well. Chronic acute pain will do that to you.

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8 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Yeah, they've got me on 1mg Dilaudid every 4 hours as needed. It knocks down the arm pain a notch (example: pain without Dilaudid=8, with Dilaudid=7), and it lasts for on average 3 of the 4 hours. That's on top of my standard oxycodone.

I'me not sure how I would deal with chronic pain.  Not well I suspect as I'm pretty close to useless when I get migraines or arthritis pain.  

8 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

They've also discontinued my blood pressure medication, saying that my blood pressure is too low. A doctor (don't remember which) said I need a higher blood pressure to help pump the fluids out of my leg. Go figure.

 

That makes a bit sense.

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They've just started me up on a useful-sized dose of Lasix at last, now that my BP is in a more normal range. Got 60mg IV this morning. Now, they have to measure what comes out. I guess that's to make sure I don't go and get dehydrated or something. Don't see how I could with all of the extra fluid I've already got in me.

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20 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Now, they have to measure what comes out. I

When I started taking lithium they had me record both my fluid intake as well has how much I peed out for 3 days, then again after 2 weeks on lithium.  I was told that it didn't matter how much I was drinking, I just needed to stay about the same (ideally exactly the same) from week to week.

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6 hours ago, mlooney said:

When I started taking lithium they had me record both my fluid intake as well has how much I peed out for 3 days, then again after 2 weeks on lithium.  I was told that it didn't matter how much I was drinking, I just needed to stay about the same (ideally exactly the same) from week to week.

Yeah, lithium is potentially dangerous. If your blood levels get outside a certain range, you "go toxic," as I liked to call it when I was on it. Man, I hated the stuff. It killed my creativity. I went a year and a half without writing a single note of music. Never again.

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2 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Yeah, lithium is potentially dangerous. If your blood levels get outside a certain range, you "go toxic," as I liked to call it when I was on it. Man, I hated the stuff. It killed my creativity. I went a year and a half without writing a single note of music. Never again.

It was the side effects that took me off of it.  Muscle spasms and bad taste in my mouth all the time.

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For the 1st time in years, I had a high blood pressure reading.  No super high, just 150:88, which was high enough for them to take it a 2nd time, but no high enough to panic over.  Need to start checking my BP every morning.

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I got told last evening that, in addition to the urine output monitoring they're doing on me, they're restricting the amount of water I can have! I'm limited to just 2 liters of water in a 24 hour period. For someone who gets dry mouth easily, this is not going to be a walk in the park. It's 2:17am, and I've got just over 150ml of water left to tide me over until 7am. Not fun.

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1 hour ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

For someone who gets dry mouth easily, this is not going to be a walk in the park.

Will they let you chew gum or suck on hard candies?  That helps with dry mouth for me.

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1 hour ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

They would if I had any. I have none.

Have Mrs. Prof bring you some when she visits next.

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It looks like I'm going to be in the hospital until at least Friday. I spoke with the Infectious Diseases doctor, and she said she did not like the way the cellulitis looked on my legs one bit. She's added the IV antibiotic Cefepime to the Cubicin that I'm currently on. Both are strong, broad-spectrum antibiotics, but it's going to take them at least a couple of days before they show any effect on the cellulitis.

I'm also being switched back off of the IV Lasix and back onto the IV Bumex diuretic. The Lasix just stopped working on my swelling. Sure, any other fluid that I drank got knocked out in a flash, but that was it - it wasn't acting on the edema fluids. So, essentially, I'm being put into the role of a guinea pig as far as IV diuretics go. The doctor doesn't even know if Bumex is going to work or not.

Back to the antibiotics - the Infectious Diseases doctor wants to put a PICC line back into me. I told her it was a PICC line that gave me a DVT in my left arm and asked her to do an ultrasound on my left arm before considering inserting a PICC line. She agreed. I've just had the ultrasound run. Of course, the ultrasound specialist was of fine, upstanding character and would not give me any test results before the doctor had a chance to read them (lousy upstanding fsckin' [redacted]). I'm still waiting for the results. I don't know if they could put it in my right arm, because that arm's elbow has phlebitis (a blood vessel irritation) in the elbow, near where the PICC line would go in.

Just 35 minutes until my next Dilaudid shot for my right arm. I think I'll watch the stock market crash while the time goes by...

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12 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

It looks like I'm going to be in the hospital until at least Friday.

Sorry to hear that.  Are they still keeping you on limited water intake?

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