Thursday, April 21, 2016 12:08 pm: Nurse Mark calls back from Brattleboro (Vermont) Internal Medicine and leaves a message. He says PA Paul wants me to stop taking the new blood pressure medication, Amiodipine Besylate (AB for our purposes) for 1 to 7 days to stop the constipation. He wants me to buy a blood pressure cuff and use it. If the blood pressure gets 150, I should call Paul. Paul also wants me to resume taking AB after the constipation ends because it's so good for me.
I call Nurse Mark Thursday morning at 10:30 and leave a message. I ask if it is safe for me to be only on one blood pressure pill as it doesn't work anymore. I also ask if I get a 150 on my blood pressure, is it safe for me to wait hours for Mark to get my message, get to Paul, and then get back to me? I remind him that about a week ago at the Emergency Room in spite of both blood pressure medications, my blood pressure reading caused the alarm to go off on the machine. I heard the responding male nurse say "150," and he was concerned until it finally went down to 120 or 130 after a bag of water seemed to make the difference. I haven't heard from Nurse Mark yet.
I have been thinking about this situation, and this is my suggestion to PA Paul: Don't leave me on only a blood pressure pill, Benazapril, that doesn't work by itself anymore. Prescribe something temporarily while I'm off Amiodipine Besylate to supplement the Benazapril.
I plan to make copies of this and drop one off for Jody Dodge, the administrator at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and one for PA Paul at the front desk at Brattleboro Internal Medicine.
Peter Nickerson, Philosophy Major, Class of '68, William and Mary
MS at VCU, 1975 and MSW at NSU, 1993
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment