08/01/2013:
5:30: Waken up for the normal vitals and Lovenox shot, ouch!
5:45: I am a little hungry so I snack on 2 rice krispy treats.
5:55: Back in bed.
10:00: I am out of bed.
10:45: My mom picks me up to head down to the Tulane for my follow up appointment with Dr. Safah.
11:10: I check in at the frontdesk. We just sit in the waiting room.
12:15: We are taken to the back and they get my vitals. 236lbs no temp, and I still have a blood pressure and pulse.
12:20: The nurse asks me the normal questions and goes over my list of medications.
12:40: Dr. Safah comes in and sees me. She says I am looking great. I told her I took myself off of the metformin because my blood sugars were extremely low in the morning. She said that is fine and glad that I was able to stop it. She says I should keep the weight off that I have lost and continue to live a healthier lifestyle. She says the blood clot in my left arm from where the PICC line used to be seems to have gotten worse. Although I feel no pain like I used to when moving around or waking me up in the middle of the night from pain. She has me hold up both of my arms and sees no difference and my blood flow to both hands are the same. Then my mom begins with the questions. She asks if she can feed me meat once a week, and Dr. Safah says no. She does not want the gout to come back and its not time for meat yet. After asking me what I have been eating, I tell her rice crispy treats, cheese pizzas with mushrooms and spinach sometimes, cheese bread, broccoli, anything cooked that is not meat I eat. She asks why I am not eating any seafood, I respond to her that she said last time that I could not have any seafood when the gout first set in. She said that I can have seafood now, just make sure it is clean and well cooked. Deep fried catfish, boiled shrimp, gumbo, etc, I can have any seafood I want, just no meat. I have her check the wording for my medical bracelet, and she has no issues with the wording. I ask her if we should have blood cultures done on my port since my last day of Vancomycin was Tuesday, and she says they can pull them here in the office before I leave. Other than that she says I look good.
1:00: The nurse comes in to access my port. She wipes off the cream and goes to stick me. She sticks me twice, each time, no blood return, but I tell her it burns when she pushes the saline, so it feels like she missed the port all together. She gets a new needle and tries again and this time, no burning, so I am sure she is in. Now I get to flap my arm like a chicken, move it all around to we get to the special spot where blood can be drawn back. We find the spot, and she pulls 2 10ml syringes of blood and then puts the blood from them into the bottles to be watched for the cultures to grow anything.
1:15: We are out of there. I make my next appointment for 2.5 weeks…
1:30: We are pulling out of the parking garage, lol, glad to be going home again.
2:00: Home we are… I order a fried shrimp sandwich from Spitalies. It tastes great!
3:00: Back on my computer at home checking up on a few things…
6:00: Pizza for supper, cheese and spinach… I am having Fried Catfish tomorrow night!
7:00: Just watching TV in the den in the Lazyboy.
11:30: Bath time. I’ll be happy to get a shower again. Research shows that showers also carry more bacteria than baths because they are a smaller area and the air doesn’t circulate as well, causing the area to stay moist longer and become a breeding ground, blah… I don’t have a choice I have to be safe! Oh well more research to be done on the laptop while I relax.
11:59: Another day gone….
