Sodium
On January 6th, my grandma had an appointment with her doctor. She had her annual lab work done and this was a follow up appointment. The doctor went through her lab work with us, and everything seemed to be fine, except of course her sodium levels are too low still and her blood pressure is too high. A while ago, I read about how low sodium can affect the blood pressure. I knew that too much sodium could cause high blood pressure, but I never realized that having low sodium could affect you in the same way. I think several people told me to give her some campbell's soup because it is loaded with sodium. She doesn't really eat a lot of soup like that, so I eventually decided to try giving her chicken broth as a drink. I have a chart that I keep for her blood pressure readings. I was looking over them and saw a really good reading for her. In my notes on the side, I wrote that it was 15 minutes after she had some chicken broth. So, I decided to give it another try. I gave her a little bit heated up in a mug. She drank it down, and then I waited for about 20 minutes or so and then took her blood pressure. It was 160 in one arm and 145 in the other arm. This is actually pretty good for her. I think I will try to continue giving her a cup or less each day. Maybe her body will hold on to some of that sodium and improve her blood pressure a little bit. At the end of that visit with her doctor, we got a new lab slip for 6 months from now. The doctor said under her breath that it's something the insurance company wants, so we need to do it. Otherwise, all was well and we left.
Pinky Toe
The next week, my grandma asked me to look at her toe. She said it was kind of hurting. A couple of days before this, she said that her feet were kind of bothering her in the middle of the night. She couldn't really describe to me what the problem was, so I told her that sometimes if you lay on your arm wrong, you cut off circulation and you get a pins and needles kind of feeling. She jumped on that and said, "YES! that's what it felt like, pins and needles." So I told her to just move positions in bed and maybe she would get the circulation going again. She told me that when that happened, she moved her leg out of bed and let it hang off the side of the bed. She kind of moved it around and she said it was fine again. That's what made me think she was somehow cutting off the circulation. So when she told me to check her toe, I figured it would be more of the same. I took off her sock and looked at her pinky toe on her right foot. It looked a little pink and puffy, so I figured she must have hit it on something. Maybe she banged into the bed post or something. Then she told me to check between the toes. I looked and it was pretty gross. I didn't really know what to think of it, cause it was like a hole in the toe. There was a sore there and it was round and some of the layers of skin were gone. So, the first thing I did was take pictures so I could get some advice from other people. I cleaned it with hydrogen peroxide, and then I put some neosporin on it and a band-aid. I showed my mom and she thought it looked ulcerated. I showed my aunt and she said it needed to be seen by a doctor and taken care of. I showed a friend who also said it needed to be seen by a doctor. After looking up frightening pictures of ulcerated toes online, and reading about them, I pretty much scared myself into calling the doctor and making an appointment. I called and had to leave a message. This was a Thursday and I needed to know if she could get in soon, otherwise I would have to rearrange some scheduling. I went to the doctor's office and showed the picture to her nurse, and they made an appointment for the next day. January 15, 2016. We went in around 11:30 or so and saw the doctor. After all this, the doctor tells us it's a corn. She didn't go into too much detail as to why it looked like that, but I gather it probably fell off and left an open sore. The doctor said that maybe her shoes were a bit too tight. She said maybe the pressure of the shoes pushing her toes together caused them to rub together and maybe eventually causing a corn to develop. The doctor prescribed her an antibiotic to take for 10 days, 3 times a day. At this point, she has been taking them since Saturday the 16th, so she only has a couple of more days until she is done with them. Thank goodness, because she complains about having to take pills. However, she did tell me that they were easy to swallow, even though they look really big.
Dermatologist
When we were at the 1st appointment with the doctor, I told her that my grandma had this mole that hit right on her bra line. The only reason I brought it up, was because my grandma was telling me that it was bothering her and she showed it to me, and it looked red and not so good. My grandma said it has been there for years, but I had her doctor check it out anyway. When the doctor looked at it, she said it was an angioma. She said she could refer us to a dermatologist. I told my grandma about that and asked her if she wanted to get it removed or just deal with it, since she has had it for so long anyway. The doctor gave us the referral anyway. I called when we got home and made an appointment. It was set for January 20th. When I got home, she called me and said that maybe we should just cancel it. I told her she should have told me that before because I had just made the appointment. I think she tried to get out of it several times before we actually went. I kept telling her, that I didn't care if she wanted to cancel it, but she needed to tell me so I would have enough time to cancel. She never really said for sure one way or the other, so we went to the appointment. I was running late that morning, so we made it there 5 minutes before the appointment. We had to fill out a couple of papers, and then we waited until they called us in. Then we went to the room, and waited some more. It was about an hour from the time of the scheduled appointment that we actually saw the doctor. When he did come in, it only took about 10 minutes and we were all done. The doctor was very friendly, and he looked at it and said that it looked benign, but he wanted to take it off anyway. I told my grandma that he wanted to take it off and is that ok. She just shrugged and made a "oh well" kind of face. He shot in some numbing agent to the mole itself and a little around it. While he was waiting for it to take affect, he powered up the tool to cauterize the spot. Then he went over with a scalpel, and scraped it off, then used the tool to cauterize it. He put a band-aid on it, and that was it. He just said change the band-aid everyday and put a little antibiotic cream on it. He gave us an instruction sheet to take home and then he said goodbye and left. At least it was quick, and fairly painless for her. She doesn't seem to have any pain from it. In fact, we went to the store right after that and she said, "When is this thing gonna start hurting." I said, "I hope it doesn't start hurting at all." So she is doing well, and so far no pain.
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