Things are Looking up!

After 2 weeks in the hospital, Elaine is slowly starting to feel better. She was able to get out for 20 minutes today in a wheelchair, which was about 10 minutes too long. It is a good start!

So far, they are waffling on the concept of Parkinson's disease. It appears that her total iron was very low, which can lead to symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease.

We were sitting around the bed the other day, a nurse, Elaine and myself trying to figure out why she was going down hill so badly in a week and a half. Some Googling showed that low iron will give similar results to P.

The nurse went and had a talk with the doctor. He was already on it and the special blood work just came back that evening. It is compounded by the Parkinson medication. If you give the maximum dose to a patient without P , then the side effects are (are you ready for this?)  identical to a patient with P.

Feeding 3 bags of iron solution, and cutting back slightly on the P meds gave almost instantaneous improvement! Taking her rapidly off the meds can spell disaster.

Now, she is still weak, still nauseous, very tired, and unable to do much, but this is a big improvement over Saturday when both Elaine and I figured she was checking out.

A little more improvement and she will probably be ready for release in the next week or so.