So I did have a continuation of my epic break set to post today, but several of you have reached out asking how Matt is because of yesterday’s post (thank you for those notes of concern!)

I thought it better to update you on what happened next, let you know how things turned out, that he is OK

We made it through the night Thursday, the night he was gurgling, his first night on the patch; I did get a handful of hours of sleep in the sunroom

He woke up a little disoriented, but not as bad as I feared he would after the evening before

The new RX the doc gave him clearly had worn off in the midst of the night, and that was a relief

I sent a message to the neurologist first thing to get feedback on what might have gone wrong

Was it the patch or was it the new RX or, possibly the combo?

Our plan for the weekend was to drive to Scotts Valley to see Barb and Ken, hang for the weekend

Its now Friday and I had signed up to paddle in an outrigger regatta on Saturday morning in Monterey Bay many weeks back

All morning I was observing Matt, ready to make a go/no go decision on the weekend’s plans

Then I got a message from his primary care physician, an RX I had planned to pick up on the way to Scotts Valley so that we had plenty of what we needed when we were in Virginia was canceled by the In Home Care RN who visited us the day before

WTF?! As it turned out, she was just “cleaning up his chart”

Collossal mistake! Who did she think she was deleting an RX that was put in with clear intention by our neurologist just the prior Monday?

To that end, because it was so important, I had gone into CVS on Monday in person to confirm they had it, if they needed to order it, and when it might be available

So without saying a single word about it, she just cancelled it

We found out later she had cancelled it Wednesday, then during her visit Thursday, said NOTHING about it to us

My thoughts? The kindest: “Who does she think she is?”

The original plan was to stay ahead of the inventory of all the RX’s he needed and reduce the stress of preparing for the trip east. Now, in her one horrible strike of a keyboard, she created a new nightmare for me to manage right before a holiday weekend

I will spare you all the details of being on hold to call the neurologist’s office, the RN’s suggestion of my next step to fix her screw up, only to be hung up on after 40 minutes of being on hold

Luckily, the neurologist gave me his cell phone number because getting a hold of him timely through the available channels has proven difficult of late

And luckily, with my transition to my new iPhone 17, I was able to safely voice dictate a text to him while I was driving to Scotts Valley

And he rose to the occasion, we got the RX’s reinstated and we picked up the one we were actually completely out of in Scotts Valley Friday evening just 30 minutes before they closed

In the midst of dealing with the RX issue, I did have a call with the neurologist Friday afternoon

We determined that the new RX I had given him I may have given him too much

The pills are tiny, one of the smallest I’ve seen

But apparently I need to cut these tiny pills in half, so effectively I gave him twice as much as I was supposed to

That may have lead to the symptoms he had, the coughing, the intense drowsiness

With all the instructions for all the meds, the patch, all the different doctors, I missed that small instruction which was NOT printed on the RX bottle

Arghhh……one time mistake, glad we learned quickly

All that going on, how is Matt doing you ask?

Well, he seemed to get better and better as the day went on Friday, better in his current state of better, not healed from this horrible disease

Barb and Ken spent time with him Saturday morning and till mid afternoon while I was at the regatta in Monterey

She said she really thinks the patch was making a difference

He was communicative, as an example he said at one point “I haven’t asked in a while, but how is Nonni? (Ken’s mom.)

It warmed their hearts to have him ask about her and they took that as a positive sign

So the drama of the transition that we suffered seems now to be worth it, the transition seems to be over

We just needed better direction and patience to get us through the rough patch

So we all had a very good Saturday, I competed with my Napa outrigger team in a regatta for the first time, we all had some beach time, a short fun visit with Trip and his wife, a terrific dinner at Barb & Ken’s

All good until about 1:30 in the morning Sunday

All of a sudden I wake up, after being bone tired from the morning regatta (5 miles) and then not getting a nap all day

Matt was standing up bleeding from a cut on his forehead!

As we worked to cleaning the forehead cut up, he kept dabbing some tissue on his neck

There was a worse cut on his ear which was bleeding out much worse than his forehead!

It seems, all in retrospect, he must have fell out of bed, hit his head on the side table

At about 2 am, after trying to stop the bleeding with pressure for 30 minutes or so, I woke up Barb, I needed another brain on this one, it just wasn’t coagulating and stopping

It took until 3 am for Barb and I to stop the bleeding

She pulled out all of the first aid supplies, a bag of frozen peas to make a compress……all kinds of supplies

She says her household has been prone to getting banged up a bit

Ultimately, we found a maxipad and some surgical stretchy tape and wrapped the maxipad to his ear and the stretchy tape around his head so we could all go back to sleep

I mean, yeah, maxipads true purpose is to catch blood…..albeit a different body part than an ear

OMG, you just never know what’s going to happen next on this journey and you just never know how it will resolve!

Honestly, he looked like one of the characters from MASH! once we had him all bandaged up

We all went back to sleep for the night, woke up a bit later than normal……but isn’t that what Sunday is for? A day of rest?

Long winded story…..;but now I am happy to report he is ok again

We drove home Sunday afternoon and are home in the Farmhouse; he is resting, we’ll be using the next few days to prepare to go on our trip to Virginia

Lets hope the next few days have substantially less drama and injury…….

I definitely have a few more first aid supplies to purchase to have at the ready…..

And I’d like to get one night of uninterrupted sleep please!

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