NK - news

[Kevinkeary@aol.com]

Hi.
First the good news.  Keigan is home again, she's breathing better, and 
there was no pulmonary embolism.
Now, the rest of it.  Keigan had a bad attack Wednesday night--we thought 
asthma at first.  She tried Eric's albuterol inhaler with no effect.  She 
went outside for fresh air, and passed out in the yard while I was calling 
911.  We tried to get air into her until the ambulance arrived.  They put her 
on oxy and gave her a breathing treatment on the way to the emergency room.  
Her blood pressure was thru the roof, and she came to fighting to get the oxy 
mask off.  (She's claustrophobic.)  There was a train across the tracks and I 
had to show them the back way out of the neighborhood.  She was in the 
emergency room until 4AM, when they moved her to ICU.  She's been there for 
the last two days, until 7 this evening.  She's been x-rayed, scanned, 
punctured, and monitored for the last 48 hours.  Tests showed she has 
pulmonary edema (fluid in her lungs) but there was no embolism (blood clot).  
They didn't test for pneumonia because she wasn't running a fever.  (She was, 
but less than a degree over 'normal'.  Her natural body temp is about a 
degree lower than average.)  Her blood pressure was and is high, but 
controllable.  (I have to fill a scrip tomorrow.)  They sent her home with an 
inhaler she is to use twice a day.  That plus the BP scrip and an aspirin a 
day.
She's tired, but walking and talking.  She's got bruises all up and down her 
arms and hands from the blood draws and IV's.  Oh, and her blood sugar's 
elevated.  The doc wants to monitor it for a while before she decides whether 
or not it means developing diabetes.
And to wrap it all up in a neat package, my enrollment for health insurance I 
filled out two weeks before (when I started the new job) may have been lost 
in the Tulsa office and not sent in.  I'm gonna get to straighten THAT mess 
out next week.  Isn't life fun.  Still beats the alternative, but sometimes 
it seems only barely.
Sorry for the delay in notifying you all, it's been a busy couple of days.
Kevin