Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones

Soz- I am absolutely pickled at this point in time.

Izzie- He is home on three different kinds of pressure meds, and one other that can be used in an emergency. We have a good sphygmomanometer at home, and Mr. P. is keeping track of his pressure.

I am really not happy about both of us being in a state of constant vigilance. In the meantime, Mr. P. needs to reorient himself to having a "normal" life, but I am going to pursue this farther. I won't be content until the docs find out why this is happening, so we can get it fixed.

Bummer Phoenix. My sister never did get a diagnosis but she has been out of the hospital for almost three weeks now (I think) and so far so good. So may you get a speedily curable diagnosis soon or he will just get well. I don't know what to think about all these strange illnesses when they can't find anything wrong.

I'm glad he's stabilized. Hope the docs can figure this out. Take care of yourself, too, Phoenix.

Yep Phoenix - can understand your angst there. Mr P needs to keep as calm as possible - his anxiety over whats going on is enough to raise his pressure again. Meanwhile, you're left wondering and pondering - which is unpleasant to say the least, infuriating and frustrating. If you have answers, you can act. If you haven't, you sit waiting for something to happen. IN.FUR.I.A.TING.

Try and ensure you look after yourself girl. You can't help Mr.P. if you exhaust yourself. Now that he's home..... long moments of peace and quiet a?

Hugs to you.

Foxfyre - so glad sis is doing better now and out of hospital. Perhaps you will never know the problem - but hopefully she will remain as healthy as is poss now. Good on Mr FF with the CPAP - definite world of difference those machines can make. FAB.

Y'all take care of yourselves.
Iz x


(hey Soz and Swimpy <waves>)

Hi, Phoe (how do you spell that, anyway?). I think I used to do it with a Pho with a slash through the o...

Posting re hoping re your hub's pressure stability. It's scary foo foo.
This is all in the way, you two should be traveling now.

Osso- We were supposed to be out west all of September. It ain't gonna happen. In a way, I am glad we were at home when all this developed. I wouldn't have known what to do if we were in the middle of nowhere and he got sick.

So far, his pressure has been pretty good today, but his heart rate is awfully low. Normally, it is in the high 50s- early 60s. It has been in the low 50s. At one point in the hospital it hit 48. He is rather tired, but I suppose that it is to be expected after a week lying flat on one's back.

Oh, I spell it PHOENIX, like the city!

I was teasing.. trying to remember some abbreviation that won't show up on my brain screen, speaking of deterioration.

<wishing Mr. P better numbers..>

It looks like Mr. P's pressure is beginning to settle down, but he is still not himself. I have to drag him outside for a walk. The weather has changed from sultry to beautiful, so he has no excuses.

We have a number of MD appointments next week, so maybe SOMEONE will come up with an intelligent answer as to why this is happening.

Hey Phoenix

How is Mr P? Any luck with the doctors yet? How are you?

x

Just checking in and hoping all of you have had some relief.

FF, glad hubby is feeling better, I know from experience that feeling tired all the time is a bummer and, as you and Mr. FF found out, can be life treatening.

Phoenix, thinking of you and Mr. Phoenix often. Bob calls once in a while just to make sure you both are taking care of yourselves.

Hey folksies over here...

Phoenix - you alright? Mr. P?

FF - how goes with with your sister these days? Hubby? You?

xx

Mr. P. has an appointment with his nephrologist/hypertension specialist. Since he came home from the hospital, his bp has been jumping up and down like a roller coaster.

I am convinced that the cyst on his kidney is the culprit. Hey, I am no doctor, but I can read, and from what I have researched, it is a good possibility, especially for someone whose pressure has always been within normal range.

If I am not happy with what the doctor says, we will get another opinion. Little by little, I have been laying the groundwork for him going to a major medical center out of town, an idea to which he has been stubbornly resistant.

How's is going Girls...

Mr P? Phoenix?

FF? Hubby? Sis?

think of y'all xx

Just a short update:

• mother is doing more or less like before. Got a trombosis in her legs (something, she's dealing with since years), but that's better by now.
Gets very depressive now and then, goes mentally downhill, which is even noticed by her "co-seniors".

• aunt still doesn't have her new teeth: it was quite an "adventure" to get one tooth out (under general anesthesia, but in the dentist's praxis).
She had and has some severe gynaecological problems .... which hardly get better since she doesn't accept any help (became very, very agressive in the gynaecologist's praxis).

I don't want her back to the psychiatric hospital (in agreement with all concerned) since I doubt that the change will do her any good.

• I haven't had contact with my sister since .... spring. She has visited mother once when she was in our native town. She seems to phone her now now and then - down from the daily basis.
Didn't send/bring flowers on our father's tomb this year on All Saint's Day - which did all the past.

Izzie- Thanks for asking. Mr. P. had a 24 hour blood pressure monitor, that took 2 weeks before we got the results. It came back completely normal. Now, he checks his pressure a few times a day, and the few days around the test he was pretty stable, taking the medications. Recently though, it has been roller coaster time again. The problem is that sometimes his pressure can go down 50 points in a couple of hours, and then he has trouble with vision, and stability. He has an appt. with the nephrologist next week.

I know that is perplexing P. Still no diagnosis but they're treating it huh.

Izzie thanks for resurrecting the thread and asking. . . .once these topics cycle off the first page and become buried in the system, its hard to remember to remember them.

After some adjustments, hubby is doing well with the C-pap, but on his last doctor's appointment a couple of weeks ago his blood pressure was up for the first time in his life. So he is now being treated for that plus we are both trying to get weight down. (That is not an easy project to do with a husband, believe me, but at least he is motivated for the first time in his life. (How many crackers can I have with my soup, dear?)

Sis is doing well though we still don't have a diagnosis for her either.

Hope all others are holding their dominion as Noddy would say.

Foxfyre- You might want to check the soup labels for sodium levels. Sodium is bad for hypertension. Most are way too high. I found Campbell's "Select Light" as a good compromise, as Mr. P. loves soup. It only has 400+ mg. of sodium, as the others have much more. I also threw out the potato chips!

Not to promote a life of soup making to people with hypertension (I am one of those) - but if you do ever think of doing that, it gets to be fun and rewarding.

I agree on canned soup and salt, Phoenix. I make a lot of soup, even in summer, since I too love soup, and have now done this for decades, but it is sort of a rigamarole. Since I live alone now, I make more at a time than I can sanely devour, so my refrigerator becomes something of a soup ingredient supply house and soup finished product storage facility.

But, the bennies are that I control the ingredients. I can use a low salt packaged broth and dilute that so that salt per volume is less. Or I can even use no broth. I can use fresh or frozen veggies with no salt in them. I can add spices of my choice for extra flavor.
And when I do use canned goods, tomatoes, for example, I pick the ones with low percentage of sodium and carbs/sugar content.. If I use canned beans, which often arrive with a lot of sodium, I rinse them like crazy. Natch, using dried beans to start with is better in many ways, but is more work in the kitchen.

I've learned a few things over my soup years, like adding cabbage, if I do, only toward the end and never boiling the soup with cabbage in it - not that I boil soup on purpose anyway (it's said that the sulfurous business starts at seven minutes - I'll have to look that up once more). I'm still a meat-eater, if not one with my old major meat fiend instincts, so I often add fresh sausage of some sort, preferably one of the many choices from a local butcher shop called Keller's. The fresh sausage doesn't take very long to cook in simmering soup. I've learned about what the italians call "battuto" and the french call, I think, miripoix - to start by sauteing some onions and depending on what you like, some sliced or diced carrots, and some diced celery, and that's where I also add garlic since I love it - before adding the main liquid and other ingredients.

Anyway, once the soup is made, I can freeze some of it if there's a lot. I don't have to cook it on the stove again, just microwave individual bowls' full.

So, I can make just about any kind of soup or chowder, including some no one's every heard of - what I call 'refrigerator soup, or kitchen soup'. There's even a bread soup, another italian recipe.

(What a proselytizer...)

(today I have a leftover cooked sausage and leftover rice - so I'm doing a soup with onions, garlic, celery, sauteed swiss chard, canned tomatoes, and maybe some pinto beans or frozen peas - with the sausage and rice added last.)

Osso- I think that I have to start making my own soup. I have a brand new pressure cooker, which is great for cooking soup. In that way I can control the sodium content. Actually I have cooked meals in the pressure cooker with no additional spices at all. I just use a lot of strongly flavored vegetables with the meat, which makes up for the lack of salt.

I am attempting to convince Mr. P. that after awhile, when he gets used to eating miminal salt, he will find salty foods obnoxious.

There you all are.... <waves> well, that's good to see.... though it means ongoing problems if y'all are posting.

Glad to hear there have been improvements for many - Phoenix - hope MrP's pressure settles and that you are taking care of yourself too.

It's so hard when you don't know what the cause of the problems are... if you know, you can deal with it (not always dealing with it well at times), but not knowing makes it so much harder and you end up questioning everything. Is it this? Is it that? Would this make a difference? Should I have done that? How can I fix it? Will it go away?

Hoping all will get answers soon.

FF - did your nephews/nieces end up taking care of your sister.... is she back at her home?

Well, I gotta go.... hospital appointment thisavo is beckoning. 'Tis good to see you all back on this thread - take care all. x