Can we borrow a stethoscope?

First off, my aunt the nurse is staying with us for a week or so to talk to doctors & care for Denise. She forgot her stethoscope. Anybody have one that we can borrow for about a week?

Today's happenings:
- Hours of phone calling to set up appointments with all of the specialists, home care, etc.
- Had to have a blood draw this afternoon
- Scheduled a bone scan for tomorrow. This was something that the endocrinologist at Huntington tried to have done the day of discharge due to hypercalcemia (too much calcium in the blood).
- Ate a fourth of a very large grilled veggie burrito. Yes, that's news-worthy.
- Denise had her first appointment. It was with her new primary care physician. Her "regular" primary care physician is a doctor that she's only actually gone to two or three times, only to get referrals to be cared for by the ObGyn while pregnant with the kids. He also came back from vacation just today, making it really difficult to make the appointment to see him within a week of discharge. That was one of the problems I had with this discharge the other day. Anyway, her new doctor heard all the details and was very thorough. With Denise's complex history these last 5 1/2 months, it took a long time, but the doctor was a champ. Denise was a champ, too. She was in pain sitting in her wheelchair for several hours driving, waiting, meeting with the doctor, and driving home again. During the visit, we found out that she weighs 90 pounds, and that's with clothes and shoes on. That's 11 1/2 pounds lighter than when she was discharged from rehab on Christmas eve. Also, her heart rate is up to 124 again. During the hospitalization, it was down into the 90s due to heart meds coreg & digoxin, which were discontinued at discharge. So the doctor thought that a consultation with the cardiologist would be a necessity. That was instructed on the first discharge, but not the second, interestingly.

It seems that almost every body system that could fail did fail at some time during Denise's hospital ordeal. So she has to be seen by many, many specialists. The amount of appointments that we have to schedule per the discharge instructions is intimidating. Please pray that all the times will fall into place. Denise is easily tired, so we can't cram too much into a day. I have to start back to work on Monday January 9th. My aunt is trying to stay until January 12th. Because Denise was in a coma for about half of her hospital stay, she doesn't know how to answer all the questions and she needs to have one of us (uh... preferably my aunt because she knows the jargon) accompany her to appointments to talk about her circumstances with the doctors. And talking with the doctors isn't the half of it, as we're spending so much time just trying to get post-hospital business accomplished so as to keep from falling through the cracks again. Sometimes lately I've thought that Denise is no longer being overseen by physicians, but by insurance administrators. Yikes!

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