IV helped, Blood lab

It seems that the last couple of posts have not been displayed on the blog. Hopefully it’s a glitch that will work itself out very soon. In the mean time, here’s the scoop…
Denise looked and felt much better after after her IV was finished this morning. A walk around the back yard was one of the first things she did today. She also held down all her food today, as far as I can remember. She’s really doing well with soups, mushy food, and especially shakes. She wasn’t able to lose much fluid today. On the one hand, it’s nice that she’s not having any accidents today. On the other hand, the fact that she’s staying so dry supports the notion that she was dehydrated yesterday.
There was a blood draw done today (in home) and I dropped the samples off at the lab at 11:15 am this morning. The doctor wrote “STAT” on the orders, which I learned is some sort of Latin that’s supposed to mean “ASAP” or “PDQ” or “Make It Snappy!” But apparently “STAT” means “Wait a long time and call the wrong phone number to report the results.” Whoever made out the paperwork wrote at the bottom of the order to call the lab results in to the doctor, but then wrote our phone number instead of the doctor’s phone number. My aunt tried calling to get the results over the phone, but the photocopy we were given with the facility’s location had a phone number that was impossible to read. We tried several times, but kept getting in touch with Nordstrom’s instead of the UniLab. My aunt also tried calling Denise’s primary care doctor that we met the other day, but got the on-call doctor for the weekend, who happens to be Denise’s previous primary care physician, at least on paper (he’s the one that’s officially listed as the PCP, but she’s only seen a couple times, only to get referrals to the ObGyn doctors…). My aunt tried to get him to OK another IV for tonight, but he couldn’t do it until the lab results came in. Vicious circle. She indicated that the doctor didn’t seem to understand the gravity of Denise’s struggle over the last few months, and spent plenty of time going over Denise’s history. At one point during their conversation, he asked who Denise’s primary doctor was during the whole time that Denise was in the hospital. My aunt told him that he was. It was funny, and a little bit pathetic. Not any fault of the PCP, in all fairness. But it’s frustrating that a case of this magnitude can go on and never even reach the PCP’s attention. Just one more crack that we’re trying not to fall through. Anway, we finally looked up UniLab online and found out that they were bought out by someone else, we got the correct phone number, and called them up to get the ball rolling again. Finally around 5:30, somebody called us back with the lab results. By that point, if the IV were to be ordered, it wouldn’t get delivered until midnight. So we’re just waiting until tomorrow.

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