The Thoughts of a Frumpy Professor

............................................ ............................................ A blog devoted to the ramblings of a small town, middle aged college professor as he experiences life and all its strange variances.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

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A Look at a Frightening Future

The cardiologist is planning to give my elderly mother Cordarone and it scares the living sh*t out of me. I had always heard of problems with this medication, but I had never looked at specific side effects and percentages of occurrence until now. Many very debilitating side effects occur in up to 1/3 of people given this medication.

I will have to give up an entire day of work tomorrow to attempt to be at the hospital when the cardiologist arrives. As you can never know or predict when the physicians may do their rounds, a family either has to blithely accept whatever the hell happens, or they have to man a 24-hour surveillance to get even momentary access to the doctor.

I would like to ask the doctor to be more conservative. I am going to "remind" him (he may not know my mother's recent medical history as he is a "specialist" who has not seen my mother before) of the history of recent pulmonary and medication issues that could have stressed the heartleading to a current and perhaps temporary problem. I am going to explain she has never had home oxygen before. I am going to ask him to consider not using Cordarone and to remove Verapamil and try this for at least a week or two WITH HOME OXYGEN to see if she perks up.

I doubt he will listen or consider it as I am not an actual "health care professional" but I have to try. I doubt it will work though.

PipeTobacco

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