Some Progress for me, less for dad

 My dad has been able to overcome some of his limitation,  It seemed that his cell phone died and we were not able to reach him.  He had written down my mother's phone number but could not dial it.  He has twice now gotten a "friend" to dial the phone number for him so that he could talk to mom.   My brother has also somehow navigated the system to talk with dad and dad's nurse.  Maybe they give my brother more respect because he calls from a hospital.

   I have been improving.  For the last two nights, I have been mostly able to avoid supplemental oxygen saturating at 91% to 93% during the night, but mornings are problematic.  I desaturate a little when sitting up early in the morning.  I desaturate a lot during breakfast.  It’s hard to breath while eatting.  Even with two liters per min of oxygen, I was saturation as low as 86% during breakfast.   After breakfast, it took a few minutes of sitting in the very comfortable hospital reclining easy chair to recover my O2.  After about 5 minuites, I got up to 90% with 2 liters O2 per min.  


    An hour later, I was saturating at 94% while typing a lot of math notes with 2 L/min O2.  I removed the oxygen and was OK.  

   The doctors want to discharge me.  One doctor is hesitant because I needed O2 to eat breakfast and to walk yesterday.  He arranged two tests.  The first test was to see if I could walk without oxygen, and today for the first time, I was able to walk around 50 yards without supplemental O2 !  The second test was to see how my body reacts to standing up (testing for POTS - Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome).  

   My seated heart rate, saturation, and blood pressure were 67, 92%, and 80/49.  The blood pressure was low.  Upon standing my heart rate, saturation, and blood pressure were 105, 90%, and 92/60.  The increase in heart rate was consistent with POTS, but my saturation held up, and my blood pressure went up!  In view of theses tests, I think I should be discharged today.


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