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Tag: ICU

Being Thrown a Life Preserver

The crazy primary care provider at Hell-crest Commons, the nursing home I had been living at for a little over three months was in the process of killing me. She was trying to wean me off of my life-sustaining IV fluid infusions that I ran all day and night through my port-a-cath in my right chest. Over the last two weeks I had been weaned from 2 liters too 1.25 liters and each drop made me sicker and sicker.

Three days after Jillian took me down from 1.5 liters of my special combination of IV saline, potassium, dextrose, and multi-vitamins to 1.25 Liters a day, they had to rush me had been rushed lights and sirens to Trauma Room One of Berkshire Medical Center. It took them a while too stabilize me in the ER, but once they did they brough me to my room in the ICU.

The first … Find Out What Happens Next

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A Yo-Yo of a Blood Pressure

me getting blood pressure checked at kidney doctor

About four or five years after my heart problems had climaxed, my blood pressure took a surprising turn.

My whole life my blood pressure had run so low we worried about me tripping over it.  This had always been concerning to Dr. Oster and my other doctors because with such a high heart rate and such low blood pressure it was too easy for me to go into hypovolemic shock.  In fact, one of the reasons I was admitted to the hospital so frequently was due to hypovolemic shock. We referred to it as bottoming out.

When I bottomed out, I would turn bluish-gray, get really clammy, and if I caught it myself before it got too severe, I would call for my own ambulance from wherever I was.  It was the worst when I wasn’t home and was in an embarrassing place. An embarrassing place was pretty much anywhere … Find Out What Happens Next

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The Medical Mystery To Be Uncoded

From the time I was nine my entire life had consisted of medical appointments after medical appointments. By the time I was nine and a half I had been misdiagnosed with an eating disorder, and at age ten I passed out in an elevator and was sent to the hospital for my first hospitalization and first feeding tube.

My first feeding tube was an NG tube. It stayed in the whole month that I was being stabilized on the medical unit. On the medical unit, I was put on specialized IV fluids, hooked up to a heart monitor, a blood pressure monitor, and an oxygen monitor. The hospital discovered that I had been in acute kidney failure and had to nurse my kidneys back to health.

After a month in the medical unit, I was finally pronounced medically cleared and was transferred to the pediatric psychiatric unit with the NG … Find Out What Happens Next

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