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Showing posts from February, 2012

The Mystery of Heavy Breathing – I

It first happened around the third or fourth day after our father was shifted to the ward from three weeks in the ICU.   His usual languid right side, would stiffen up, his right arm all clenched would move to his chest, his facial expression would be that of a person in utmost pain and breathing would be heavy, noisy and rapid.   It was scary to say the least, to watch him have this episode all of a sudden when he was asleep peacefully.   This would recur – sometimes every time 10 minutes, sometimes every half hour and on real fun days every 5 minutes.  The first night it happened, he was moved back to ICU for observation.  Nothing particularly seemed amiss, he was wheeled back to the room next morning.  In our five month stay at the hospital, this happened every so very often.    Some said our father was getting emotional.   Emotional?  So timed, every 10 minutes emotional?  Nah.   He was given steroids.   Didn’t help.   Was given strong antibiotics.  No real help there either. M

Heavy Breathing: Cause Figured II

It was an all nighter of heavy breathing on the first night at home.  A night to remember.  A new fumbling bumbling nurse, father breathing like he was possessed, and me just watched them with exhaustion all night.   And there, it stopped in the morning.   After a couple of days of just watching him obsessively, figured he breathed so when passing urine.   However did not know if the heavy breathing caused him to pass urine, or passing urine caused him to breath rapidly.   All I knew was they were connected.   Since IMC was usually done first thing in the morning, there was no frequent heavy breathing during the day.   Ha, there, the explanation why the episodes occurred mostly during the night.   It was because there was so much urine retention in the night and he was struggling to pass it and hence the frequency.  But why was the interval between so timed, I still do not know. So we then started him on IMC three times a day –early morning, evening and post mid night.   Late night

An Amazingly Simple (Temporary) Solution for Heavy Breathing – III

Unable to bear our father’s suffering any longer, we circumvented the experts and tried inserting a catheter anyway.  It was highly uncomfortable for our father, he started to bleed and few blood clots came out.   It scared us sufficiently, pulled out the experimental catheter.   It must’ve been the wounds from the regular IMC that caused the bleed. Not knowing the next steps, we waited for the wounds to heal – just miraculously. Complications Due to IMC   Source:   http://www.manfredsauer.co.uk/iqcath.asp After maybe like a week or two, my sister was at the temple for a special prayer session and I was rushing out for a meeting.  I would’ve been out of the door in a minute, but our nurse came running to tell me that our father was shivering and had temperature.  Having known the drill of infection, I knew what it was.  Unable to cancel the meeting at the last minute and not wanting to disturb my sister during her prayer, I told the nurse to give a paracetamol, called the lab