One of the things we discovered during wheels’ many trips in to the doctors office was the long wait for the oxsimiter to read the o2 levels. The nurse would clip the sensor to his finger and get an error. The issue was simply cold finger tips. To read correctly, the finger has to be at 33 c or 91f. Dad’s fingers were not. Mom would have to rub his hand until his fingers were warm enough for the sensor to work.
The solution was an electric hand warmer. As soon as we got to the waiting room we would hand dad the hand warmer. By the time we got called and the nurse did the normal weight and heart rate, his fingers would have warmed up and the ox level would be done in seconds. Huge improvement to waiting an hour.
Related posts:
Wheels Understood
Wheels on vacation, wearing his favorite college football team name on his cap, is, standing beside the wheels of the Union Pacific Big Boy railroad engine, several years before diagnosis of PPA/FTD.
I call him Wheels...
ADVOCATING FOR SOMEONE WHO DOES NOT SPEAK, IN THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT
Wheels was admitted to the Emergency Department several times
. . . . during the last three years of his illness. Each one of those stays is a story unto itself, each with their own lessons. But one common threa...
HOW TO SURVIVE AND THRIVE AS A CAREGIVER
Being a family caregiver is not a job any of us sought – and probably never, ever considered the fact that this would become a part of our lives. Our goal is to keep our sense of self and that’s how we will survive. ...