Timeline of What Happened, and Why.....

 This recent incident started when I ran out of a prescription med, an SSRI, and had some difficulty getting it refiled. My Primary Care Provider (great Doctor, BTW) had her "Patient Portal" changed from UC Health to Village Medical. 

The new website was NOT ready to roll-out, and they had several weeks of major issues. Medical records were lost, messages to your provider was were lost, appointments were dropped, scheduled wrong, or scheduled for after they were supposed to occur. i.e, your appointment for the 14th was made for the 4th, meaning you "missed" your appointment. Telephone calls subjected you to an hour more of music-on-hold while you waited. SLW was on hold for 90 minutes, and finally hung up. I lasted about 45 minutes when I called.

This is one of the worst Charlie Foxtrots I've ever seen. I've helped roll-out big sites like this, and this would have been totally unacceptable. I've seen people walked out the door for such a gross failure of a project. For a Medical website, this goes way beyond "unacceptable", and belongs in the "Inexcusable" category.

I went over Monday afternoon and told the receptionist I was in dire need of this medication, as I was starting to feel pretty bad. Nothing happened. SLW went over Tuesday afternoon, demanded to see a Nurse or somebody who could get this approved, as the pharmacy kept sending texts to me "Awaiting Prescriber Response".

After she "talked" to them, I had the prescription in an hour or so, but it was too late, and I was in withdrawl. Freezing cold, shaking like a leaf, teeth chattering, and covered in sweat. After about 20 minutes it would pass, but then I was gasping for air. Four hours later, it would hit me again. Tuesday night I started hallucinating when I closed my eyes, making it a bit difficult to sleep. All I could keep down was ice water, and even that came back up a few times. In short, I was a wreck.

Wednesday I felt a bit better, and had some ice cream, but I decided I had something was really wrong with me (Ya Think??), and Thursday morning we went to the Urgent Care Clinic. The Doctor there had spent most of his career in ER service, so he was really good at nailing things down rapidly. Had several blood draws, and exam, and an EKG. He came back in and said he had bad news, as I was experiencing a severely abnormal heart rhythm, along with "Significant T-Wave Inversion", and critically low Sodium (down to 119), Magnesium, and Potassium levels. He told us to go IMMEDIATELY to the ER, don't race there, but don't stop at Wal Mart, either. He'd phoned ahead to alert the ER, and they were waiting for me.

They started pumping me full of saline, Na, MG, and K, while taking numerous blood draws, and getting me stabilized, as my blood chemistry was way out-of-whack, my glucose was bouncing between 80 and 200, and my BP was bouncing around quite a bit, too. I had a Gamma Scan of my heart, then a stress test, then another Gamma Scan, and an Ultrasound exam of my heart. My Troponin levels were elevated, indication I suffered some permanent heart damage from the withdrawl I went through. My Doctor called it a "Cardiac Insult" which I thought quite appropriate. Heck, it "insulted" my whole doggone body. In my weakened state, the UTI that was starting went wild, and crossed over into my bloodstream, leading to a high white platelet count. My last two days in the hospital were spent waiting for the lab to do cultures on the strain of bacteria in my blood so they could proscribe a very specific antibiotic to target the bacteria.

Had my yearly "Wellness" visit with my Doctor, and she was very upset over this fiasco. The had several other patients who wound up in the hospital over the loss of communication between all parties, but I was about the most extreme one they had. I very possibly could have died from this, and I'm pretty upset about it, too.

So anyway....my blood chemistry is coming back into limits, I have some new meds to help offload fluid from the cardiac area, and ore heart exams to follow to check the damage caused by this incident.

I'm feeling better, but still a bit weak, and I lost 15 lbs during this incident.

Thank you all for the prayers and best wishes!