Medical Update

 I think I mentioned Nurse Walker before. She is actually a nurse practitioner, which is kind of like a doctor, who I have been seeing about some other stuff since February.  Well, she told me a couple weeks ago that I should go to the emergency room if I felt dizzy, light-headed, or "wonky".  I did feel that way on Sunday, so I cancelled my planned grocery shopping trip and just crashed for the rest of the day because I didn't feel competent to drive.  I didn't feel any better on Monday morning, so I called 911 and they sent an ambulance to come get me because, like I said, I didn't feel competent to drive.  On the way over, one of the paramedics diagnosed my heart problem as tri-something, which was later confirmed by the ER doctor after a brain scan and some other tests.  He said, however, that wasn't the cause of my dizziness.  He didn't know what the cause was, but I wasn't having a stroke or heart attack, which was nice to know.  He prescribed a pill, which I later found out was basically a souped-up version of Dramamine, which is commonly used to treat motion sickness.  

Next day, I found out that Nurse Walker had come to the same conclusion after she had me wear a mobile heart monitor for two weeks.  She then changed my blood pressure pills and said to come back in a month.  I couldn't drive to my appointment with Nurse Walker, so a nice guy from the Senior Center took me there and back for five bucks.  Nurse Walker's assistant told me that the new prescription had already been called in to Walmart and I could pick it up on my way home.  When we got there, the pharmacists at Walmart said that they didn't know anything about it.  I tried to call Nurse Walker's people on my cell phone, but their phones weren't working again, so I told the nice guy to just take me home.  My wife says that their phones have been like that for ten years, off and on.  How in the hell can they run any kind of business, especially a medical facility, without reliable phone service?

  Nurse Walker has been trying to get me in to a cardiologist for months.  The cardiologist's people were supposed to call me about it, but they never did, so she called them back and "left a message on their machine".  Apparently the cardiologist's phones don't work so well either.  And guess what?  She wants to send me to this cardiologist for a "stress test."  I am not making this up!  If they ever do call me, I think I'm going to tell them to forget it, as I have had enough stress the last few days to last me a long time.

The good news is that I woke up this morning feeling much better, and I felt competent to drive by this afternoon, so I made a trip to town to pick up some groceries.  My daughter had taken a day off work and come all the way from Petoskey on Monday to get the groceries that I was supposed to get on Sunday, so this was a relatively brief trip.  I still don't know what caused the dizziness, or why it got better, and I don't even care anymore. 

Don't get me wrong, these are all good people, and I'm sure that they are doing the best they can under the circumstances.  Everybody is over worked and understaffed these days, especially the medical people.  Some good did come out of this as I finally have something interesting to write about.