Mayo Clinic Day 2

After swimming in the pool with a bunch of kids for the evening, (I know, I know, unsocialized homeschoolers, you know how we are... LOL) the child fell into bed and slept like a rock. I sat and planned my Mayo Clinic Day 2. I had appointments all days long, seemed like a full time job going from here to there and everywhere. Started out with AM blood work, then an EKG (found out it's only called an EKG here in the US, the rest of the world calls it an ECG), more walking, did I say that we did lots of walking in the Subway? I then went and got a Holter Monitor is a portable device for continuously monitoring various electrical activity of the cardiovascular system for 24 hours, then I had to go to another area to get a 24 hour blood pressure machine. This machine took my blood pressure every 20 minutes from 10pm-7am and then every 10 minutes from 7am-10pm. I ended up with a very bruised arm from this machine and it was SOOO not comfortable to wear. I was instructed to stop moving completely and not talk when the cuff starts inflating. This is really hard...when the machine goes off every 10 minutes! lol. Needless to say I skipped the tours of Mayo Clinic and some sightseeing because I would not have been able to keep up with the group due to my stopping every 10 minutes for my machine. I saw a number of people wearing them too, so it felt good not to be alone :O) After that I had to run back to the hotel, because I had to use the restroom, oh, yeah forgot to say I was doing a 24 hour urine collection so that means going back and forth to the hotel day and night...LOL.

Funny thing happened, well, not funny hahaha at the time, because I was crying. But I was filling my 24 hour urine container when my blood pressure cuff went off and ya know, I was told to stand still and not move when that happens. So I hurried to set my urine container down on the side of the bathtub, and guess what? Whoever designed that bathtub made slanted sides, because my jug slipped into the tub and spilled all over. I cried and cried. All that work for nothing! My wonderful Doctor told me not to worry about it, he said "That just goes to show you are human my friend and you will be staying another day." So we had to stay an extra day to do another collection, thankfully it worked out that it was the collection BEFORE I started taking the steroids or that would have really goofed things up. We had some lunch at the hotel, the child had a $13.00 lunch (not sure if I have ever had a lunch that expensive!) Salmon with fruit chutney, mashed potatoes and gravy, asparagus and fruit cup. I had leftover pork roast, rice noodles and green beans.

On to the next appointment, I had to go take a class on how to use a Pulse Oximetry is a non-invasive method allowing the monitoring of the saturation of a patients hemoglobin. And I was suppose to sleep with that on for 4-8 hours, yes, oddly enough they expected me to sleep with all that stuff on me and that PINCHING blood pressure cuff that bruised me going off every 20 minutes while I slept. LOL! I did sleep on and off but it was not the greatest of sleep. I think that they should have done that test another night.

Back for more blood work at 4pm and in between all these running back and forth to the hotel room to the bathroom for my 24 hour collection...lol.

Relaxed around the pool talking with a dear homeschooling friend on the phone all the while the unsocialized homeschooler sat in the hot tub chatting with some military guys that were staying at our hotel while they worked on some medical training over at Mayo Clinic. Then he spent some time in the pool playing with some other kids. Then back to the hotel to flip through tons of channels that had nothing on them hahaha, we did find I think at least 4 channels that were in Arabic, which we found sort of cool to watch the ticker at the bottom of the screen since it runs backwards as Arabic is read right to left instead of left to right like English. Then off to bed.
Moe