Welcome And Why We’re Here

Welcome to the Only Child Diaries Podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life? That you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulthood while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries Podcast.

Why Last Week Went Silent

Today I'm gonna talk about why I didn't do an episode last week. But it's gonna be short. I'm tired. So I did take a break last week because my husband had been in the hospital for um about five or six days. And then I had taken him to a second hospital. Oh, let me go back. Um the last ten days or so before he went into the hospital, and again, my husband's very resistant to going to the ER. He's been in a lot of hospitals, and it's always a complicated, frustrating process for us both. But uh he started experiencing these episodes, and he's he's had this issue before where he would, you know, if he stood up too quick, he'd get dizzy, his blood pressure would drop. But these were different. Um, these episodes lasted anywhere from a couple minutes, the longest one was an hour, actually. And what was different about these episodes were that he was slurring his speech. He was really out of it.

The Night Of The Scariest Episode

And when this would happen, I would check his uh glucose reading. He has an insulin pump combined with a uh CGM, which is a continuous glucose monitor. And so at any point in time, as long as everything's working, we're able to see a reading of what his current glucose is. So it wasn't a glucose issue. I was, you know, I'm I never it's really I'm not a I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nurse, but I'm able to do uh sort of um a basic assessment of vital science, right? I have an oxygen meter, I was able to get an oxygen read on him, and we have a blood pressure cuff that's you know pretty good, pretty accurate. So I started taking his blood pressure, and this is what I've done in the past, and I know about where he lands with his blood pressure readings, and um this one episode that took place the week before he went to the ER was absolutely terrifying for me. Uh it was it lasted about an hour. He uh was really out of it. He was, like I said, he was slurring his speech. And it was about it started at about 11 o'clock at night. So, you know, it wasn't like I could just call everybody or contact friends. It was I felt really alone. And uh the lowest reading that I got was 60 over 40. Now I'm not one to panic because I've learned that there's things that you can do, but seeing his blood pressure reading come up 60 over 40 was again, it was terrifying because there's just not more there's not much room to go, right? Um, there's not much slower you can go and still be uh alive. Now, I'll say that his blood pressures when we've been going to outpatient PT, they check when we arrive and they check throughout his hour-long visit. Um, but oftentimes when he's been arriving, it's been low as well. He's been functional, but it's been you know 80 over 50, 90 over 55, somewhere in that range, and he's been okay. He's been, you know, he's been Bill, right? At 60 over 40, 65 over 45, he was not Bill. He was not in there. And I didn't know enough to know that when you're having a stroke, your blood pressure's high. No to self, right? So I was terrified that he was having a stroke. Because not only was he slurring his speech when he was trying to talk, he was also talking gibberish. It didn't make any sense. Um, I thought that his left eye was a little droopy, not not bad, but just, you know, maybe I was reading into it, but it looked a little droopy. So uh this is what happened. And uh so that first hour-long session uh episode that we had, I really thought he should go to the hospital. And I knew that if I called 911, they were gonna take him to, again, the closest hospital, which is what happened when he fell last year when he had the herniated discs and he broke a rib. And that didn't work out very well for us. So I ran up the street, I tried to call, but their phones were off. So I ran up the street, um, three houses to our neighbor, and they were you know, they were still awake, and I was like, hi, come and help me. So our neighbor John came down with me and sat, tried to talk to Bill. Bill Bill knew enough he was he was out of it, but he knew enough that he did not want to go to the hospital, which was very disappointing. But sometimes you have to go along with the terms that people have, right? It's on his own terms, it's not on my terms. I tried to argue with him, wasn't gonna work. He was still, he was still strong enough, right? He was still like John said, he was still in there and he knew he didn't want to go. Okay. So John kept him talking, and finally, and and so here's the other thing that I learned is that when your blood pressure is low, and I learned this from a couple nurses, um, eat a salty stack. So I was I have these little bags of Cheetos. They're not big bags, they're little tiny 50 cent bags of Cheetos, because otherwise we both go crazy with Cheetos because we love Cheetos. So I was feeding him Cheetos, he was eating the Cheetos, it was all good. So slowly his blood pressure started to rise again. He started to come out of it. Um, and that night I stayed up till three o'clock. I was just watching him making sure that he, you know, are you still alive? Um, and there you go. The next day he was fine. The next day he had no issues. It's so weird. So this happened on and off. He'd have one episode, um, maybe it would last a couple minutes, then he'd come out of it. So fast forward to the next week, he had an episode started in the afternoon, and it wasn't like the first one, but it was

ER Trip And A Salty Fix

pretty long. And you know, it was just clear to me that he we needed to seek medical assistance. So I went and got my neighbor, we got him in the car, didn't want to go, but he realized that really he needed help. And we went up to the better hospital, which is a little just a little further, like 15 minutes away instead of five minutes away. And he was there, they admitted him, they did some tests. So this this day that that uh I took him to the hospital, you know, he his blood pressure again was really low when we got the Cheetos. Um, but he wasn't able to put them in his mouth. He wasn't chewing, he wasn't chewing them either. And this was equally scary for me because where is this gonna go? So I ran and I got some salt from the kitchen, put it in my hand, wet the Cheeto with water, and rolled it in the salt in my hand and stuck it in his mouth. And it sounds weird, but I told the ER doctor about this, and he said, he looked at me and he looked at my husband, and he said, Wives like this are the reason husbands like you are so alive. So, and we all laughed about that. It sounds weird, I know, but you know, I had to get his blood pressure up, and he wasn't he wasn't conscious enough to to feed himself, and he wasn't chewing. I did what I had to do again. It's

Discharge Frustration And Second Hospital

weird. So they admitted him, he was there from a Tuesday to a Sunday, and then they said we want to discharge you, there's nothing that we can do, and we want to send you to skilled nursing, to which we both said no, it's a hard node for skilled nursing, because they really hadn't addressed the problem. They told us that if you know he was getting ready to take his blood pressure medication, we needed to stand up, I would take his blood pressure, and if it was under 130, or if it was under 80 for the bottom, he would not take his blood pressure, and that was pretty much their baseline, that was their solution, and to me that just did not sound right. So I we got him discharged, I put him in the car, and I took him over to Cedar Cyanide, which is a higher standard of care. It's further, it's where he had the nerve blocks done for his herniated discs. Um we've got a couple of his doctors over there, and he's been there since uh last Sunday, so it's almost a week. They've done a whole battery of tests, they've done a lot of uh a lot more looking around, exploratory testing, uh talking, medication changes, and really what they've all come up with is that he has something called orthostatic hypotension, which is basically that your blood pressure when when you stand up goes goes low.

Orthostatic Hypotension And Lost Strength

I'm still not exactly sure how this is gonna translate to living, um, but we'll see. We'll proceed. It's one day at a time. But in the meantime, because he has been so dizzy and because he's now been in the hospital for 12 days, um, the nursing staff, granted, in both places were a little bit nervous about actually standing him up and trying to get him to walk. And so he's lost a lot of strength during that time. I for I forget what they say exactly, but you know, they'll medical people, physical therapy people will say for every day you stay in bed, you lose like 50% of your strength. So he's lost a lot of strength, which is unfortunate because he's wor he's been working so hard to gain strength, to gain muscle, working through physical, outpatient physical therapy. So um the uh the options were to send him home, which you know, I was like, uh I mean he really wants to

Rehab Plans And Caregiver Burnout

come home, I get it. Um the other option was acute rehab. And there's a great acute rehab facility out in Century City, which is if you're familiar with the Los Angeles area, is further away from Cedar Sinai. And Bill was out there after his first neck surgery. It's a wonderful, it's a wonderful facility. It's top notch, but it was really hard on us because it's further, I couldn't be out there all the time. I was that's when I was working in an actual office. Um I'm already super exhausted from this whole thing trying to be there every day. Um the driving, I have to be at home certain times to take care of the pets, to do uh to continue on doing my job. I had a a work lunch yesterday that I had planned for like 25 people, and I had to be down at the office yesterday for that. There are other commitments that I have, and anyway, we talked to uh everybody. I talked to everybody yesterday, um, even though I wasn't there, and we found an acute rehab facility, which is in Pasadena, which hopefully he's gonna go to tomorrow. Um, and that's about 15 or 20 minutes from from where we live. Um it's uh and hopefully it's it's just as good, but he will get physical therapy three times a day. So it's kind of like a boot camp. And he'll be there seven to ten days. So he'll get kind of a jump start on getting stronger. I know if he just came right home, he would stay in bed, he'd probably sleep for a whole day, and then it would be hard for me to get him up safely. It would fall on me. Um, I'd have to be monitoring his blood pressure all the time. And it's, you know, it's a lot, and I feel like it'll be safer for him. Um, our pets both really miss him a lot, and it's really hard on them too. But I would rather him be safe and gain strength, and and um yeah, so he was at first resistant to that, and uh but he did see that this was a good thing. So we're gonna try to do that. I'm super tired, very tired, but I'm trying to keep up, I'm trying to eat, I'm trying to, you know, sleep as much as I can every night and uh hydrate. Remember to hydrate. Um, and there's just so much to do. So that's the story of why I didn't do an episode last week.

Work Pileups Gratitude And Next Steps

Um I also had a chance to finally look at my email, and there's so many uh folks, there's probably more than five or six that I saw had emailed me about um guesting on the Only Child Diaries podcast. And I was able to write back everybody and explain. You know, I initially thought that after my big fundraiser at the end of May, everything would just kind of open up for me, and I'd be able to go back to my regular life and uh start doing the things that I wanted to do, start doing my things again. That's just not been the case. I've continued to work on closing out the event, which has taken more time because a lot of it I had to do by myself. I haven't had any help. And then I've been working on this lunch, which in retrospect, if I had known what was gonna happen three or four months ago, I wouldn't have planned it for this past week. But that's how it goes. But it was a successful lunch, it was worth the effort, it was a lot of work. But um, you know, that's how things go, right? And I'm grateful. I was really worried there for a while, but I was great, I'm grateful because they've really checked him out. He's gotten like a whole major overhaul of every system. Um, you know, Bill being a type 1 diabetic for over 50 years of his life, now, um, you know, has a lot of medical issues, but his heart is strong, his brain is clean, he did not have a stroke. They can't say for sure that he didn't have a TIA, which is like a mini stroke, but um a lot of the things that you know we thought was was happening is is good. He checks out. So I'm grateful for that, and I'm hopeful um because I was really worried there when they couldn't figure it out. You put your trust in doctors, and when they when they don't come up with something, it's like, well, where are we gonna go from here? So always finding answers, always looking for answers, always trying to understand better about medical conditions so that I can really fully understand what's happening and ask the important questions. Grateful for my friends who have a lot of medical knowledge, who are in the medical field, and just grateful for his doctors who really care about him and are on the team. So um that's all I've got for today. Next week, I hope I have uh a better update for everybody. And well, next week we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me.

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