On Friday, Jim finally got sprung from the hospital around 3:30. On the way home, we stopped at Kroger to pick up his 6 prescriptions. One of the prescriptions (his pain killer) wasn't approved by insurance so they were going to have to do a little song and dance before they could fill it. (I mean, how stupid! They approve open heart surgery but not the pain killer for his cracked chest!? Dumb.) It didn't really matter, however, because Jim had some tramadol left from another surgery or something.
So we get home (the dogs were great), get Jim settled and I set about sorting his pills into a pill organizer thing and see that one of his prescriptions wasn't filled. Ugh! So I go BACK to the pharmacy and pick it up. (They had the tramadol at that point.) I then come home, we eat, watch TV for a bit, and then I put Jim to bed. Ultimately, he stayed there for about 2 hours and then came down to sleep in his chair. He slept well and woke up around 5:30. He even fed the dogs and let me sleep until 6:00.
After coffee etc., I took all of Jim's vitals (we have to track them for a couple weeks). Temp was good; weight was good; BP was HIGH although his pulse was good. So I check it again (maybe the reading was wrong). Still high. Then I look at his meds and realize that the prescription for his BP, which we'd picked up the night before was wrong. It was supposed to be metoprolol, 75 mg. Instead, they gave us 25 mg. So I call the on call doc who eventually calls back and I explain the issue. He tells me to just give Jim the other 50 mg. So I do. Well, a bit later, the nurse practitioner calls and say, "Uh oh". See, the 25 mg is an extended release and basically Jim got triple the dose. It really wasn't too big a deal, I just had to monitor his BP through the day and ensure his systolic didn't go above 150. It didn't.
The other part of this debacle was the fact that Kroger fucked up and then when I went to Kroger AGAIN on Saturday to get the correct med, they didn't have it. So then I had to wait until 3:00 and go to a different Kroger to get the freaking med. I was so annoyed. But in the end, it all got figured out and Jim's BP and heart rate have been great since.
In terms of Jim's progress, he really is killing it. He's been doing his walking (twice, he did two loops around the island yesterday); he's been sleeping well (he starts in bed and eventually moves to his chair...so thankful for his chair!) and he's been eating well. I can't tell you how relieved I am that he's home but more than that, he's not in much pain. I think he's only had to take a pain killer once a day. That's pretty amazing.
So plans today: Jim will call the doc's office to see if they need us to go down and get labs done. His white blood cell count was still high on Friday and they may want to monitor that. If we do have to go down, we'll go after I finish all my exercise stuff. Once we're home (if we have to leave) I'm going to get back to work. I need to do some grading, check my students' grades and email parents. I also have a couple IEPs I'd like to crank out for meetings I have in January. I also need to start working on progress reports. I'll have plenty of time this week to work on those things.
And finally, dinner tonight will be creamy bean and kielbasa soup. It's one of my favorites. Yummy!
K - well, I guess I'll go get on the elliptical. Happy Monday! Later!
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