JIM BUTTON,
TELLING TALES.

Low Pressure

Yesterday and last night were very tough.

I started off at Foothills in Emerg to deal with my fever and abdominal pain and ended up in the Peter Lougheed in preparation for another ERCP. You’ll recall this surgery is the one where they put a tube down your throat and use Inspector Gadget like tools to do fascinating work like putting in stents, investigate inflammation etc. 

I have ascending cholangitis and a minor pancreatic issue so they are going to go in and investigate. This surgery is scheduled for 2:30 today - if I’m allowed to go under general anaesthetic.

Seems I tested the boundary again last night with a five alarm fire. For many hours my blood pressure was hovering around 69 / 34. This is very low and very dangerous. 

They threw every test on me. Tests like ecg, more blood, an ultrasound on my heart to see if it was surrounded by fluid, another ultrasound on my bladder, they threw fluids into me rapidly, gave me steroids, took blood from an artery in my hand, and probably another dozen things that I don’t even remember. 

It was chaos with many people in the room poking, prodding, filling out things on computers and rushing to get new items to try to elevate the pressure. 

But the one line that I will never forget took place around 4:30 in the morning when the Doctor asked if we should call my wife.  

Guess things were really bad. 

I said no and that we were going to get out of this one, to which he smiled and said OK. 

And here we are, 90/60. Not great but certainly stable. 

Damn I’m tired.  

Disoriented

Emergency