Month: January 2025

Well, it’s been a week since my last post but I really don’t yet have any answers to post about my afflictions. So I will update you on what has been happening around the old homestead.

The CPAP machine has continued to be a huge non-issue. I am using it nightly with good results. My sleep, as reported by my Select-Comfort bed is better and less restless. I have a follow up appointment with Wyoming Otolaryngology on the Feb 19th that I expect will confirm that I am satisfied with the treatment.

We had some excitement earlier this week. Late Sunday Jan called me to say don’t be alarmed by ambulances rolling up, as she had called them for Mike. (If this is news to you, bitch at Jan, not me.) I suited up and walked up to Jan & Mikes to give her some moral support. After about an hour they packaged Mike up and carted him off to the hospital. Jan and I followed in her truck. The good news is that they didn’t go code-3 and drove leisurely to the ER.

After a couple of hours at the ER, they decided to admit Mike, based on diagnosis with Influenza A (no COVID), with an early catch of pneumonia. We hung around until they got him settled in a room and made sure they had all the admin stuff handled. We got home about 2:00 AM (there is an amazing lack of traffic at that hour; we didn’t see another car, in either direction, all the way home.)

Once I got home, I broke out the Ivermectin and took some additional Vitamin C and Zinc. I have maintained that regime this week and haven’t had any symptoms.

Mike reportedly came back last night and all seems over.

I have been getting some nuisance calls, all reportedly from cities around Portland, reportedly scam calls. I screwed up the first couple of them and answered, with “Yes?” rather than “Hello”. Got no answer or a hang-up but apparently the call got triggered as being answered. I started getting a flurry of them (4 or 5 per day) so I dropped back to not answering them and letting them go to voicemail (most don’t leave it). I have been blocking the number each time and the calls are trailing off. I haven’t gone yet to blocking all calls except from my call list, but I’m getting close. The good news is that I’m also blocking calls from scam sites offering to get me out of my Trend-West time share that I haven’t owned for a couple of years.

Well, that’s most of what has been going on here in Wyoming.

I think a brief review of the bidding would be in order. The medical issues I am dealing with are:
1. Circulation issues with lower legs being addressed.
2. Sleep apnea identified late last year which I agreed (under protest) to seek treatment for.
3. MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment) or Early Alzheimer’s
Below I will address the status of each of these.

Lower leg circulation.
We have been slowly examining the circulation issues from the bottom up. We started with Venous Mapping of my legs. That was a group of ultrasonic examinations of the veins in my legs looking for leaks, valve issues, or other things. They didn’t find any of the obvious issues.

The next step was a cat scan of my abdomen, looking for any circulation issues that would cause the problems observed in my lower limbs. That also did not show any abnormalities.

The last thing to look at was an Echocardiogram of my heart. That involved using ultrasound to reflect off my beating heart and measuring various heart valves and chambers to evaluate blood flow. This last was done yesterday afternoon and I haven’t seen the results yet. I didn’t notice anything wildly out of character from one I had several years ago. If the heart isn’t the issue I don’t know where that leaves me.

My next appointment is next month, on February 25th do I will add it to the list of discussion points.

Sleep Apnea
Sleep Apnea has evolved into a non-issue. After discussing with the Otolaryngologist last November, the decision was made to try the CPAP machine and if it was as uncomfortable as the one I tried several years ago, then we would seek trying out the Inspire surgical implant.

Well, I got the new and improved CPAP machine and tried it out and have had zero issues. I don’t know if the CPAP machines are better or if I have improved, but from day one I have been sleeping just fine. I am up to 23 days of usage with the score of 99-100% on the iPhone app.

I think my sleep quality is improving, looking over my Sleep Number bed results in general I see fewer restless periods during the night. The next follow up appointment is on the 19th of next month. I will talk it over with the doctor, but right now I think I will stick with the CPAP machine.

MCI/Early Alzheimer’s
This has literally been a whirlwind of activity. I had an appointment with Neurology on January 6th. I don’t think I had the doctor’s report the last time I posted.

Note: One correction, I remembered the address, not the Street names; other than that, it’s correct.

Since then, I have blood work, an Electroencephalogram (EEG), an MRI, and a Lumbar Puncture/Spinal Tap. I was able to examine the MRI, but other than determining I did not have MS (Lindsay’s MRIs had prominent scars in the MRI that documented the progress in the disease) I didn’t see anything obvious. The spinal tap was a big nothing. Lindsay had one in the mid 1970’s, and it was fairly traumatic. This one was easy, good local anesthetic, a local X-ray to guide the needle in, extracted the spinal fluid, and put a band-aid on the site. They then wheeled me into a recovery room I vegetated for two hours and then walked out. (Mike and I had lunch at Johnny J’s, since we were downtown anyway.)

I expect that I will have a follow up appointment with Dr Santiago to discuss the results over the next couple of weeks.

Amplifying info to follow.

The blood test that was done on Monday afternoon, the results are shown below:

Jan 06, 2025 1:46 pm	Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH)	1.95 uIU/mL	0.27-4.200 uIU/mL
Jan 06, 2025 1:46 pm	Vitamin B12 Level	886 pg/mL	239-931 pg/mL

Seems that the values were within the normal range; so, nothing obvious there.

On Tuesday I had an EEG which seemed to go OK. I haven’t been able to find any results on the web site but the nurse administrating the test seemed satisfied with the results.

This morning, I had an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Lindsay had these done on a regular basis. I was in and out in 40 minutes the first thing in the morning. The results are already posted on the website by this afternoon, but I don’t think there is an easy way to import them into this webpage. I have gone through them and although I obviously don’t have MS (none of the artifacts of dead areas), I’ll have to wait for the doctor to evaluate them.

I got a call from Dr. Santiago’s nurse to see about scheduling a follow up with him. I discussed not having completed the Lumbar Puncture so she said she would check with the doctor to see what he wanted to do.

Shortly thereafter, I got a call to schedule the Lumbar Puncture on Friday, but the scheduler discovered that the PA who did the procedure was out on Friday, so it is scheduled for Tuesday Morning. You have a two-hour observation period after the procedure, so I won’t get out until about 11:00 or so. Jan or Mike will drop me off, and (hopefully) pick me up afterwards.

Also, on Tuesday afternoon I have my Echocardiogram, for the other issue, poor circulation in my lower legs and feet. Thats a follow up to see what is causing poor circulation.

Expect to have updates next week.

Today I had an appointment with the Neurology Clinic (accompanied by Jan, as always you can have whispered conversations about me). We had a wide-ranging discussion about my history and development of my “issues”.

One big thing I noticed is that there is a new (to me) category called MCI, Mild Cognitive Impairment, between normalcy and dementia. I think that that describes me much better. See the posters below.

One of the things discussed are activities to keep the mind agile and engaged. Things like puzzle books, Wordle, classes at Casper Community College, etc. etc.

I brought up what Sis told me about the longitudinal studies of dementia at Mayo Clinic. He was familiar with it and the local status is that the spinal tap for protein fragments was established last year. The blood serum test should be available in February or so, but so far they haven’t got the correlations available to evaluate the results. (probably next year it will be widely available). If you have the protein fragments they follow-up with a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan.

So, the plan of treatment is:

1. Get a blood test at the doctors office (dropped in this afternoon
2. Get an EEG at the Neurology Office (tomorrow)
3. Have a spinal tap (lumbar puncture) at the hospital downtown (waiting for scheduling to call)
4. Get a MRI at the hospital downtown. Scheduled for Wednesday Jan 8th.

From the above schedule you can see one of the attractive items about Wyoming health care – 3 out of the 4 items, that were identified this morning, have been scheduled this week. Picture if this were in California or Portland, OR.

I will provide an update to this towards the end of the week to provide more information.