Explain it away (Mon, 21 Jun 8am)

Yesterday was another bad day. Mom started the day with nausea and vomiting, which she insists is acid reflux. When I asked her why she thinks that, she gave a vague answer about some medical test a long time ago where they told her that her esophagus showed signs of acid reflux even though she had never had any of the usual symptoms. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll remember that she had a lot of nausea and vomiting during our trips into KF and over to Medford for doctor appointments during the time when she was having her spells, but she insists that those were car sickness.

The rest of the day yesterday she was extremely fatigued. I left for about three hours to give her some time to rest, but during that time she got one 10-minute phone call and a short visit from her neighbors the Daly's, bringing her a huge beautiful bouquet from their garden. When I got home she was very tired, and remained that way through the evening.

Last night I was thinking hard about the problem: why was she doing so well--really just like her normal self--during the week BEFORE the pacemaker surgery, and now the week AFTER the surgery she is completely wiped out and too tired to even walk up to her mailbox. Suddenly it hit me. The one thing that differs between those two weeks (besides the pacemaker, which actually should be making her feel better) is that she was not on Toprol the week before her surgery. Toprol is the drug that lowers the heart rate. When she was being discharged from the hospital last Tuesday, Dr. Kubac told her to self-regulate the Toprol...to take it if she felt her heart was racing, and to back off depending on how she felt (but he didn't go into detail on how she might feel).

So mom has been continuing the regime she was on when her spells started a month ago, taking Toprol twice a day. I don't think she has even considered modifying her dose. So this morning I did a little research on the Internet and found two interesting possible side effects of Toprol: fatigue and nausea. And looking back, it seems to me that during the times of her most extreme fatigue, those were also the times when she had bouts of nausea. My suspicion is that a certain level of Toprol in her blood is causing both symptoms.

This morning I told her that I am suspecting Toprol of causing her fatigue and possibly even her nausea, and immediately got invisible resistance: "What you kids need to understand is that I am 85 years old and I have to accept that I am not as energetic as I used to be..." Um, yeah, but how does that explain that last week when you were 85 years old you were fine and this week when you are still 85 years old you are so extremely tired that all you can do is sit in your recliner? The best I could do was to get her to agree to "discuss it" with Glenda when she calls in her Protime reading this morning at 8:30am.