Dr. Liu Visit

I said I would blog after my appointment, though the real point of the visit was for Dr. Liu to see me in person and assess my condition. It was fun to see his delight when I showed him what my arm can do. I'm back to about the level of function I had just before the arm shut down last time, so any improvement from here on is function I haven't had in a long time. He approved my exercise plan of gradually increasing reps, weights lifted with the left arm and walking ever longer distances. He also reviewed and approved the decadron tapering schedule and devised a similar, though quicker, tapering for the dilantin, to commence a week after the last dose of decadron. As, for monitoring my blood sugar, I'll keep doing it beyond the last dose of decadron, and once my before-meal number is consistently below 126 for a week or two, I can stop monitoring. The septra to prevent pneumocystis can be discontinued once we've allowed my immune system to regenerate a bit after the decadron. I'll have a blood test in a few weeks to confirm my t-cell count has risen. Really looking forward to not having to keep track of so many meds, so many therapy apptmts, exercising twice a day, etc,

Questions I had for him:

Q: Why did they suddenly started giving me salt tablets the day before I was discharged?

A: Because of having gone through brain surgery, I somehow developed Hyponatremia. My discharge-day sodium level was normal, so I recovered very quickly from it, after two positively nauseating doses of salt tablets.

Q: Why didn't the nurses monitor my blood sugar while I was in the hospital?

A: It's a surgical service. The surgeons don't like to take responsibility for medical issues on the ward unless they have to, though Dr. Liu believes they should. This explains why a nurse actually did test my blood glucose one time. I imagine it was below 250 and so regarded as not worth dealing with.

I guess that's all I have to report on the doctor visit. I'm very excited about getting more arm strength and control and hoping for at least a little bit of progress every day.