Saturday, August 22, 2015

WINDOWS 10

Uploaded W-10 to a lap top as an experiment.  It is always gutsy to upload a new OS to a computer.  It is SLOW.  Like a Blue Whale!.  It takes more time to load than my oatmeal can start burping in the microwave!.  It has moments of flatus.  Lemme clarify:  It pauses, "honks", then resumes a bowel movement somewhere on a silicon chip, then resumes, like nothing ever happened".  Problem is, I am 15 minutes without a cursor, and cursing.  It Sucks.  Peace, TJW

DVT, THE OUTCOME

If I were a fife player, I would pipe a merry tune.  My wife will be back at work, soon. (help me Ian Anderson).  My wife is much better.  My post is about my wife's battle with health care, and insurance, and long waits to see a Doctor.  Our health care insurance does not cover acute life saving meds for DVT.  I will not mention the the drug.  We are making way, though.  She will wreak havoc in the clinic she works at as a nurse on Monday.  My Wife, has been a pent up bull for many weeks.  Having DVT, and a PE is nothing short of scary to me as her husband, but scary as shit.  Discussion:  a DVT is a clot in a major vein in the body.  When the clot breaks off, it flows through the right atrium of the heart to the right ventricle, which pushes it up into the main pulmonary arteries (left or right).  It can then clog a blood vessel that allows for oxygen transfer in the lungs.  This may cause shortness of breath.  Which my wife endured.  She promptly presented herself to the ED and was treated.  She was hospitalized for an ordinate amount of time.  

Alas, many of the tests, and procedures are not covered by our measly insurance.  But our health care system worked for us.  My Wife still lives, and works.  The key is "works".  Many catastrophic health care situations leave a spouse unable to work.  Consider a heart attack, when a spouse cannot work.  Consider me, and my family lucky.  My wife is already passing out gifts to the needy people in our community today.  She love's to help people.

 

 

Saturday, August 1, 2015

DVT, A Personal Diary

My wife came into the kitchen last Tuesday saying her calf was hurting.  I told her that he miniscule varicosities can be painful.  We both went to work.  I get a call at my place of business, which is a small hospital in south Texas.  I see that call is from my wife.  I was sitting at the front desk of the X-Ray department.  (Yes we call it X-Ray in south Texas), other places call it Radiology....and since we have CISCO phones, I saw it was my wife calling.  Cell phones do not work in our hospital.  Probably for a reason.  Too many people would be playing candy crush or angry birds.

She was at a large hospital in Houston in the ED.  I almost had a technicolor bowel movement.  She told me she had a pulmonary embolism.  Her O2 SATS were 82% on admission.  The did a leg U/S, and a chest CT.  Great. 

Problem was the source of embolism was her peroneal vein in her left leg.  Atypical!

Darn, Heck, and H-E-double L!

I clocked out, and went to lend a feeble hand in her admission process:  Wheeling her up to the fourth floor into a private room. (Nice)  And we got her some food.  My wife is a nurse, and is not a typical DVT patient.  She is lithe, active, and determined to have her way.  She gave me a list of stuff to bring from the house.  The list included pink slippers, a favorite pillow, toothbrush, comb etc.  I went home to gather things up and grabbed our son and gave him the news.

"Mom had SOB, and palpitations, and pain in her calf.  She has a blood clot in both of her pulmonary arteries" 

"What" said my son?

I explained it to him, and he shed tears.  I told him it would me OK.

We sprung her from the hospital, and she immediately started going through the discharge bills.   She found she was charged for two units of whole blood which she did not get in the IV.  Her OP prescriptions hit us like boulders: Coumadian, and a shot form of low-moleculoer weight form of heparin.  The shots would cost $275 a week.  Insurance did not cover it.

My wife is home now, and the doctor bills are mounting.  She has a pulmonologist, a blood doctor (Haematologist), PCC, and an endocrinologist. 

My wife is a nurse, and she is pissed off.

Discussion:  Most DVT arise from the above knee veins.  Her DVT is strange.  the peroneal veins are typically small veins that run on the inside of the calf, but they are deep veins anyway because they are accompanied by an artery.  Hat's off to the Sonographer that grabbed this one.  Sadly, many poorly trained sonographers do not scan the PTV's, or the peroneals.

She is doing well.

Sorry for the lapse in posts. it has been an interesting summer.

TJW