Well it's a birthday at least, but today we are back at the A&E unit via the clinic for some more tests.
This morning was the first time in a while that I've woken up in the same house as my mother and therefore had the opportunity to make her a brew and some breakfast. Delivered in bed with a birthday card too - a good start to the day.
Since then though things have gone a bit pear-shaped as currently I'm sat in A&E whilst mum has an ECG and some blood tests. She's been short of breath since I arrived on Wednesday and today it is sounding like she's walked up 100 steps. Mum has never smoked and her lungs should be in decent shape.
Since the heart attack her meds have changed, and I'm looking at this Beta-blocker called Brilique, more specifically, the side effects of the drug. Apparently, shortness of breath is very common, at least for the first couple of weeks. And by the looks of it, simply stopping the course could actually make things worse in the arteries. I'm not a doctor though and so we will wait and see what the experts say.
Off the record
I find the amount of medication docs are willing to push out to patients, some of those tablets taken as a counter to balance side effects from other tablets, fucking ridiculous.
Pill towers - have you seen those?
7 boxes split into 6 hour slots, and each slot overflowing with pills of different shapes and sizes. Makes me sad.
Well the ECG has come back fine and so it's onto the blood tests. Hopefully they'll show nothing untoward or at least contain clues on the shortness of breath.
I'm getting a little hungry over here, I wonder what is for birthday lunch.
This is where the photo of the vending machine should be but the signal here is so bad, the photo won't upload. Need to save some battery to call a ride home.
Happy Birthday mum, can we go somewhere else next year?!
EDIT.
It's now over 9 hours since we arrived at the A&E unit. 2 sets of blood tests, an ECG, a chest x-ray, and lots of chocolate bars (for me) later, it is time to go home.
Tomorrow - Birthday tomorrow..