My mom is nearly 80 and is an asthmatic and a 60+ year smoker. Until this week, she has not been diagnosed with COPD but I'm sure she has had it for awhile. For the last three years since she has moved to our apartment complex, I have watched her compensate for not being able to get adequate oxygen. She has been in massive denial about the long term effects of smoking but she is very stubborn and had been very healthy (other than asthma) for a person her age.
I recently earned my Florida teaching certificate and I have been subbing in several subjects in middle schools. My certification is in Mathematics. I contracted a really bad crud from the students which I think I passed to my mom even though I tried to keep away from her while I was sick.
It turned very dangerous for her when she got bronchitis (as it turned out) and was having trouble getting adequately oxygenated. We went to the ER on Sunday where she received a breathing treatment, a steroid shot, and a Z-pack. She refused a chest X-ray for which the purpose was to determine if she had pneumonia (which she didn't have).
We went to see her primary care doctor Monday afternoon after she relented late in the day when she was feeling worse (worse than she told me or I could discern). Mom asked for a nebulizer which her PC prescribed. She has never done home treatments or taken oxygen at home. The nebulizer was delivered to her apartment late Tuesday afternoon. I had picked up the nebulizer medication Monday night but she waited to do a treatment until I arrived after subbing on Tuesday afternoon. There was no improvement after the neblizer treatment and she was in great distress. A second trip to the ER.
The catastrophe started when the ER recorded one of her medications as 200 mg a day instead of 200 mg three times per day. Unfortunately, this was her baseline medication to control her asthma and keep her breathing well on a good day.
Later I will give more details of our 5-day stay in the hospital (her in a bed, me in a chair) but I'm too tired right now. We are home now and she is at Day 6 without a cigarette. She has never before spoken of quitting but she did while in the hospital after 3 days.
The f*** up with her medication could have killed her but the upside was it kept her in the hospital 2-3 days longer away from cigarettes so maybe it saved her life if it convinced her to quit smoking. We are at Day 1 back home with her not smoking.
I recently earned my Florida teaching certificate and I have been subbing in several subjects in middle schools. My certification is in Mathematics. I contracted a really bad crud from the students which I think I passed to my mom even though I tried to keep away from her while I was sick.
It turned very dangerous for her when she got bronchitis (as it turned out) and was having trouble getting adequately oxygenated. We went to the ER on Sunday where she received a breathing treatment, a steroid shot, and a Z-pack. She refused a chest X-ray for which the purpose was to determine if she had pneumonia (which she didn't have).
We went to see her primary care doctor Monday afternoon after she relented late in the day when she was feeling worse (worse than she told me or I could discern). Mom asked for a nebulizer which her PC prescribed. She has never done home treatments or taken oxygen at home. The nebulizer was delivered to her apartment late Tuesday afternoon. I had picked up the nebulizer medication Monday night but she waited to do a treatment until I arrived after subbing on Tuesday afternoon. There was no improvement after the neblizer treatment and she was in great distress. A second trip to the ER.
The catastrophe started when the ER recorded one of her medications as 200 mg a day instead of 200 mg three times per day. Unfortunately, this was her baseline medication to control her asthma and keep her breathing well on a good day.
Later I will give more details of our 5-day stay in the hospital (her in a bed, me in a chair) but I'm too tired right now. We are home now and she is at Day 6 without a cigarette. She has never before spoken of quitting but she did while in the hospital after 3 days.
The f*** up with her medication could have killed her but the upside was it kept her in the hospital 2-3 days longer away from cigarettes so maybe it saved her life if it convinced her to quit smoking. We are at Day 1 back home with her not smoking.