Well, so this is a bit about the balance. You can get away with some crappy grades if the rest of them is decent. If you need the latter subject to make it decent, then yes, drop the first one. If not, then go for both.
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Well, so this is a bit about the balance. You can get away with some crappy grades if the rest of them is decent. If you need the latter subject to make it decent, then yes, drop the first one. If not, then go for both.
MagisterCultuum
Great Sage
Dad is in the Hospital tonight.
He has had a fever since Monday night, which goes away whenever he takes Tylenol but keeps coming back.
It reached a high of 103.3 F at 11pm Tuesday and was back up to 102.8 F at 8am this morning.
He was very resistant to letting me take him to the ER, but finally relented this morning when his urologist's nurse insisted.
Our top theory for the cause was a UTI. He had a cystoscopy (where the put a camera up into his bladder to decide how best to treat his enlarged prostate) last Friday, which can make patients vulnerable to infection.
He was fine until Monday afternoon, when he had bad bowel incontinence.
Since then he has had urinary incontinence, great difficulty standing up, chills in very warm rooms, and a lot of major confusion, mostly but not only when his fever was high.
Most days he has seemed ok in the mornings (after his first Tylenol takes effect), starts having chills and some other minor symptoms without much of a fever in the afternoons, and then gets a high fever and horrible confusion late at night. I have not gotten much sleep lately since he kept waking me up every few minutes to demand help getting up to go to the bathroom, and then once up would often say he does not need to use the bathroom but wants to sit down somewhere else or to discuss some random issue. (Most often it is a financial issue that makes no sense whatsoever and was probably inspired by a bad dream, but which he insists I would understand if I were a CPA like him.)
The Urologist gave him an antibiotic that he started on Wednesday, but it does not seem to have helped.
I gave him a home Covid test yesterday, which was negative.
When we got to the ER this morning his Tylenol was working so he had no fever.
They quickly found that his sodium and potassium levels were low.
His blood pressure was also a bit low.
His chest x-ray looked good.
The urine test was not yet conclusive for a UTI.
They performed a CT scan of his head, but I have not heard any results from that.
They were concerned that he could have an infection in his blood and wanted to keep him overnight to monitor for sepsis.
They gave him IV electrolytes and antibiotics.
The ER doctor said he would probably come home tomorrow morning, but the hospital doctor said they would likely keep him a couple more days until they can get the results from his blood cultures to be sure they are using the right treatments.
He has had a fever since Monday night, which goes away whenever he takes Tylenol but keeps coming back.
It reached a high of 103.3 F at 11pm Tuesday and was back up to 102.8 F at 8am this morning.
He was very resistant to letting me take him to the ER, but finally relented this morning when his urologist's nurse insisted.
Our top theory for the cause was a UTI. He had a cystoscopy (where the put a camera up into his bladder to decide how best to treat his enlarged prostate) last Friday, which can make patients vulnerable to infection.
He was fine until Monday afternoon, when he had bad bowel incontinence.
Since then he has had urinary incontinence, great difficulty standing up, chills in very warm rooms, and a lot of major confusion, mostly but not only when his fever was high.
Most days he has seemed ok in the mornings (after his first Tylenol takes effect), starts having chills and some other minor symptoms without much of a fever in the afternoons, and then gets a high fever and horrible confusion late at night. I have not gotten much sleep lately since he kept waking me up every few minutes to demand help getting up to go to the bathroom, and then once up would often say he does not need to use the bathroom but wants to sit down somewhere else or to discuss some random issue. (Most often it is a financial issue that makes no sense whatsoever and was probably inspired by a bad dream, but which he insists I would understand if I were a CPA like him.)
The Urologist gave him an antibiotic that he started on Wednesday, but it does not seem to have helped.
I gave him a home Covid test yesterday, which was negative.
When we got to the ER this morning his Tylenol was working so he had no fever.
They quickly found that his sodium and potassium levels were low.
His blood pressure was also a bit low.
His chest x-ray looked good.
The urine test was not yet conclusive for a UTI.
They performed a CT scan of his head, but I have not heard any results from that.
They were concerned that he could have an infection in his blood and wanted to keep him overnight to monitor for sepsis.
They gave him IV electrolytes and antibiotics.
The ER doctor said he would probably come home tomorrow morning, but the hospital doctor said they would likely keep him a couple more days until they can get the results from his blood cultures to be sure they are using the right treatments.
Pro-choice.
Both are being selfish, but for different reasons. The truth is that my province is in the 4th wave of covid, partly because the premier just HAD to have his <censored> Stampede this summer so he could put on a cowboy costume and flip pancakes and do a bunch of soft campaigning with the public.
The Calgary Stampede was canceled last year, so of course this year there was a huge turnout even with a moderate attempt at social distancing. But hardly anyone actually observed the rules, so naturally there were a lot of new cases. It's not just seniors anymore. Middle-aged and young adults are getting this, and I do understand the senior centre's rationale for enforcing the rule that all their employees and affiliated volunteers and workers have to be double-vaxxed.
But I object to penalizing those of us who receive the rebates.
They had a social work student doing practicum there call me and tell me about this, and I let her know that I already knew. I had some questions, some of which she could answer and some not. I was asked what I would need in an alternative housekeeper to get me to stay on as a client, and I told them they would need to clone the person I already had, due to the extra agreements we had going, plus the necessity of them being someone with whom Maddy is comfortable.
So my decision is going to please no one, not even myself. But it's the best I can come up with, as the only suggestion they had was to ask my AISH worker for extra funding. I could try... but it's doubtful I'd get it.
Ajidica
High Quality Person
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Can't find random thoughts thread, so I'll put it here. Booked travel to Chicago for a model UN conference - flight down, train back. The non-tax portion of my plane ticket was about $30, my return amtrak ticket was about $70. (I want to stay away as far as possible from airports on the day before thanksgiving, and weather concerns. If weather impacts the train, air travel is long since shutdown.) How is it possible that flying on a sophisticated piece of machinery with substantial ground support cost less than half a train pulled by conventional diesel engines trundling along at about 60 mph?
MagisterCultuum
Great Sage
Dad called us last night. A few minutes into the call some alarm went off, so he decided to hang up and see if he could get a nurse to stop it.
I called back half an hour later and talked for a while. He seemed to be doing ok.
He called back again this morning, and seemed disappointed that he probably would not be coming home today. He claimed that he had not been seen by any doctors yet, but he also seemed to assume that his doctor would be a man whereas I know the hospitalist for his unit that I spoke to yesterday was a woman. Maybe he had seen a doctor but sexist assumptions made him assume it was a nurse.
A couple hours later my brother texted me that he had just had a call with dad and that dad seemed to be doing well and in good spirits. He said he had just come back from a walk around the hall with the help of a physical therapist. By brother said they did not talk long because the doctor entered the room, but he seemed to think he was improving.
My sister texted this afternoon after she spoke with him. She said he sounded very anxious and confused. His temperature had been pretty steady at 98.5 but dad had trouble remembering whether that number was temperature of blood pressure.
I could not get through to dad when I tried calling his room an hour ago.
When I called the nurse's station they transferred me to his nurse, but she said she was in the middle of an emergency and could not talk at the moment.
I just called back again and was told that dad has been transferred to the ICU.
The emergency was that dad had stopped breathing for a little while and his oxygen levels were dropping fast.
He started breathing again, but with difficulty.
A regular oxygen cannula was not working well enough so they had to hook him up to a more sophisticated breathing apparatus.
His O2 level was back over 90% when she last saw him. She said the doctor would call us with an update soon.
I just noticed that I missed a call from the hospital on my cell phone halfway through the call with that nurse, so I might know more now if I hadn't called back.
edit:
The doctor just called back.
She said that he seemed to have some fluid in his lungs.
They gave him some furosemide to help clear it out.
He has been taking Furosemide regularly for the past 6 months, but despite me giving a full list of medications to the staff in the ER the main hospital never got that info.
His blood pressure was low in the ER yesterday but was high earlier today, before returning back to normal.
His urine sample did not show any sign of any infection, so it is very unlikely that he has a UTI.
They are still waiting on the results from the blood cultures.
She said he was getting very agitated and yelling a lot this afternoon. She thinks the problem breathing was caused by his agitation and insistence of talking rapidly when he ought to be taking deep breaths.
She said we could call the ICU to check on on him, but that it is probably not a good idea to try to talk with him because the mask would make that difficult and his desire to respond could increase his agitation when he really needs to relax.
They cannot predict when he will be ready to come home, but said they would have to release him from the ICU and send him back to the regular hospital first.
He has an appointment with his endocrinologist on Tuesday just for lab work. She said the hospital could just do the labs and send her the results.
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…at least she's coherent then?
I remember when we first started discussing politics, years ago. It was a slow tapdance at first, since I know that my left-wing views don't fly with a lot of people here (RL-here, not forum-here).…at least she's coherent then?
But when she mentioned that of course she was pro-choice, and of several other viewpoints, everything was mostly okay.
We've had a few arguments over veganism. Finally I told her that I don't police and judge the contents of her fridge, so I did not want to hear her views of the contents of my fridge. And I caught her in a "gotcha" anyway one day, when she asked for something to drink that wasn't water or pop. I knew she'd say no to milk, and the only thing I had left was clamato juice. So I offered that, and she accepted. When she finished, I told her, "y'know, one of the ingredients in that includes clams, and clams are animals..."
So she shut up about my fridge. We had another argument after my diabetes diagnosis. She tossed out a bowl of hard candy, saying I couldn't have it anymore.
O-kay... that's not what I was told. In fact, that is one of the things I am supposed to keep on hand in case of dangerously low numbers. I've experienced those a few times, and it's scary as hell. Yes, I keep hard candy around now in case of emergency, and told her that just because her wife is diabetic, that doesn't give her the right to decide what my own situation is and what I can and can't have. Her wife doesn't use insulin and I do. So they are two very different situations.
I guess I just don't get the whole vaccine conspiracy crap. These people, most of them, have the standard vaccinations that everyone is supposed to have. But for some reason they've decided that the pandemic isn't real, the hospitalization and death statistics are fake, and some of them are still denying it when they're told they need to be intubated.
US private rail companies in the 1960s and 70s were abandoning passenger rail because it was deemed unprofitable, so Amtrak was created by the federal government as a stopgap to ensure some passenger service was still available. It was originally intended to fail, but became a much bigger success than anticipated, so the political capital to totally abandon passenger trains never materialized. Private rail companies there still mostly operate freight, but some have started to get back into passenger rail.
Amtrak is great. Precovid we used it regularly instead of flying.
Ajidica
High Quality Person
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Passenger rail service was unprofitable since the mid 50s, with the passenger trains kept running due to mail contracts with the postal service. It was not uncommon for some trains to consist of a long string of mail cars with a coach or two tacked on to the end. When the postal service ended the railway mail contracts in 1968, railroads tried to kill their passenger service as soon as possible. Some western railroads like Union Pacific and Great Northern weren't super bothered about keeping passenger trains running because they only ran a few and the losses weren't that bad when thought of as a rolling billboard. Passenger service on the east coast (specifically northeast and Ohio valley) was one of several aspects killing northeast railroads. Collapsing ridership, saddled with massively unprofitable commuter services*, and a collapsing industrial base killed any attempt to re-invest in passenger service.
As far as renewed interest in private passenger rail, outside of some explicitly tourist companies or oddities like the Alaska Railroad, I believe the only private passenger service in America is the Sun Line in Florida, which is its own very strange thing that I'm not entirely convinced isn't simply an attempt to drive land prices up for real estate developers.
*You may think commuter service was profitable because of the users, but it isn't. A lot of equipment and infrastructure is needed to move a lot of people into a few very specific points at only two periods throughout the day; and the need to constantly switch coaches onto different trains and move empty trains out of station to free up space means there was a lot of non-revenue movement using a lot of manpower.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Apparently, India has only been able to maintain cheap passenger rail service because it is subsidized by coal carrying freight trains.
MagisterCultuum
Great Sage
I spoke to dad and to his ICU nurse this morning. He does not have a fever. All of his vital signs seems good now.
Dad repeated that he was very low on potassium and something else he could not remember but felt sure it was not Sodium (even though the ER doctor had said he was low on Potassium and lower on Sodium).
He is breathing better today than yesterday. They put him on a mild sedative via IV because he was getting so agitated.
The nurse said his dementia was causing some paranoia. He told them that CIA agents were spying on them through the window. He felt sure were out to harm the nurses and doctors but did not have any ill intent towards him personally.
The preliminary results of the blood cultures do not show any infection. The doctors had not seen him yet today to determine whether to release him from the ICU and send him back to the normal hospital.
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Dad called my cell phone when I was downstairs making mom's lunch.
When I called back the nurse said that he told her to use that number because he thought we would be in church.
Apparently he has been very anxious all day today about the Trust he is supposed to be managing. He kept saying that he needed to go home so he could write its beneficiary his check, as he would likely stop by to pick it up today or tomorrow.
The nurse seemed exasperated from having the exact same conversation with him over and over.
I got off the line with him and called the guy. He said that he does not need the money right now and would be ok waiting a full month. He just wants dad to focus on getting better. I explained dad's current condition, including mentioning the dementia drug he has been on since the start of the year. I thought dad told me he had already told him about the dementia, but it seemed to be the first he was hearing about it. He still seemed to be fine with letting dad manage him money though, or in having me or someone else dad recommends take over if dad is not able to continue. He'd like dad to call him with an update after he gets home, but not to worry about anything for the time being.
I called dad back again to inform him of this while his nurse was trying to give him a bath. We did not talk long, but she thanked me for sorting out the situation and said she hopes dad remembers it well enough to not keep bringing up the subject. She said it seems like the dementia symptoms are getting worse and seemed confident that he would not be coming home today or tomorrow.
---
I just got off the phone with a Physician Assistant who has been treating Dad in the ICU.
She said that dad has improved.
He no longer needs the mask to help him breathe.
They still have not found any sign of an infection that could have caused his fever.
His Potassium level is back to normal and his Sodium level is well on its way to being back to normal. (She didn't mention it but I remember from the last ER visit that increasing a patient's sodium levels too quickly can be fatal, so I assume they are intentionally raising it gradually.)
She said the low potassium could be a side effect of Furosemide, before I informed her that he had very low potassium a couple times before he started taking that pill.
They stopped giving him the sedative at 11am this morning and resumed all of his regular prescriptions, except for the Imbruvica which their pharmacy does not stock. (That is his leukemia drug, which we get for free thanks to a Medicare plus a charitable grant the manufacturer gets a tax write-off for providing, but which officially costs over $1500 for a 4 week supply.)
She seems to think that the confusion and agitation is related to his poor oxygen levels, and probably not something that would require a consult with his Neurologist.
She blames the low oxygen level mostly on a weak heart.
She said the drugs he was already taking seem like exactly the right choices for treating his heart, and asked if he had any history of heart failure.
I told her that his heart had always been strong until a little over a year ago, but that he had Atrial Fibrillation back in April.
I also mentioned that the doctors at the hospital where he was admitted in April seemed to think that the Imbruvica was the cause of his heart problems, although his oncologist disagreed.
He seemed to think dad ought to stay on Imbruvica even if it does increase the risk of heart issues, as every available alternative treatment for his leukemia poses a higher risk of the same or worse side effects.
They are going to have a cardiologist examine him tomorrow morning. Since I told them his regular cardiologist has an office in their professional building, they are going to try to use him or an associate from the same practice.
They will probably move dad out of the ICU tomorrow, but would want to keep him in the regular hospital for at least another 24 hours before sending him home.
He probably won't be back in time for either of his doctors appointments on Tuesday, so I should call in the morning to cancel the urologist follow-up and ask the endocrinologist to just request a copy of the labwork from the hospital instead of bringing him to her office to have blood drawn.
Dad repeated that he was very low on potassium and something else he could not remember but felt sure it was not Sodium (even though the ER doctor had said he was low on Potassium and lower on Sodium).
He is breathing better today than yesterday. They put him on a mild sedative via IV because he was getting so agitated.
The nurse said his dementia was causing some paranoia. He told them that CIA agents were spying on them through the window. He felt sure were out to harm the nurses and doctors but did not have any ill intent towards him personally.
The preliminary results of the blood cultures do not show any infection. The doctors had not seen him yet today to determine whether to release him from the ICU and send him back to the normal hospital.
---
Dad called my cell phone when I was downstairs making mom's lunch.
When I called back the nurse said that he told her to use that number because he thought we would be in church.
Apparently he has been very anxious all day today about the Trust he is supposed to be managing. He kept saying that he needed to go home so he could write its beneficiary his check, as he would likely stop by to pick it up today or tomorrow.
The nurse seemed exasperated from having the exact same conversation with him over and over.
I got off the line with him and called the guy. He said that he does not need the money right now and would be ok waiting a full month. He just wants dad to focus on getting better. I explained dad's current condition, including mentioning the dementia drug he has been on since the start of the year. I thought dad told me he had already told him about the dementia, but it seemed to be the first he was hearing about it. He still seemed to be fine with letting dad manage him money though, or in having me or someone else dad recommends take over if dad is not able to continue. He'd like dad to call him with an update after he gets home, but not to worry about anything for the time being.
I called dad back again to inform him of this while his nurse was trying to give him a bath. We did not talk long, but she thanked me for sorting out the situation and said she hopes dad remembers it well enough to not keep bringing up the subject. She said it seems like the dementia symptoms are getting worse and seemed confident that he would not be coming home today or tomorrow.
---
I just got off the phone with a Physician Assistant who has been treating Dad in the ICU.
She said that dad has improved.
He no longer needs the mask to help him breathe.
They still have not found any sign of an infection that could have caused his fever.
His Potassium level is back to normal and his Sodium level is well on its way to being back to normal. (She didn't mention it but I remember from the last ER visit that increasing a patient's sodium levels too quickly can be fatal, so I assume they are intentionally raising it gradually.)
She said the low potassium could be a side effect of Furosemide, before I informed her that he had very low potassium a couple times before he started taking that pill.
They stopped giving him the sedative at 11am this morning and resumed all of his regular prescriptions, except for the Imbruvica which their pharmacy does not stock. (That is his leukemia drug, which we get for free thanks to a Medicare plus a charitable grant the manufacturer gets a tax write-off for providing, but which officially costs over $1500 for a 4 week supply.)
She seems to think that the confusion and agitation is related to his poor oxygen levels, and probably not something that would require a consult with his Neurologist.
She blames the low oxygen level mostly on a weak heart.
She said the drugs he was already taking seem like exactly the right choices for treating his heart, and asked if he had any history of heart failure.
I told her that his heart had always been strong until a little over a year ago, but that he had Atrial Fibrillation back in April.
I also mentioned that the doctors at the hospital where he was admitted in April seemed to think that the Imbruvica was the cause of his heart problems, although his oncologist disagreed.
He seemed to think dad ought to stay on Imbruvica even if it does increase the risk of heart issues, as every available alternative treatment for his leukemia poses a higher risk of the same or worse side effects.
They are going to have a cardiologist examine him tomorrow morning. Since I told them his regular cardiologist has an office in their professional building, they are going to try to use him or an associate from the same practice.
They will probably move dad out of the ICU tomorrow, but would want to keep him in the regular hospital for at least another 24 hours before sending him home.
He probably won't be back in time for either of his doctors appointments on Tuesday, so I should call in the morning to cancel the urologist follow-up and ask the endocrinologist to just request a copy of the labwork from the hospital instead of bringing him to her office to have blood drawn.
Given that sugar and insulin are both highly necessary in the case of diabetes this person is just rather dangerous and I recommend that you stay away from her.
They've always been against vaccines, claiming to be a ‘silent majority’. If you look closely at what's going on they're using the push against Covid-19 vaccines to push against existing vaccine mandates as well.Valka D'Ur said:
I suppose they seek to protectd their bodily fluids against Communist infiltration.
A front loading machine bounces around enough so that it's possible that the leg was missing because it was broken off by the machine bouncing around. A top loading washer tends to only bounce if badly loaded such that it is spinning while out of balance.
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