Potassium and Local ER experience
I actually had a pretty scary thing happen early Thursday morning. I had a weird feeling in my chest.. hard to explain but it was weird enough that I had to call my husband to come home (he works 11pm-7am). I ended up going to the ER about 4:00am or so. Actually as a matter of fact I had felt "off" the day before and called my surgeons office. They said I should come in to the ER to be looked at, we were all thinking I was dehydrated. But as it usually goes I started to feel better and didn't make it to the ER after all.
Well here it is about 22 hours later and i'm just now getting home from the ER. I had some cardiac arrhythmias and I've been hooked to an EKG monitor the entire time. Come to find out, it was caused by my potassium being so low. Whatever scale they use, it should be around a 4.5 to 5.. I wasn't even a 1 on the scale. I guess potassium is a big part of how your heart pumps the blood, it just doesn't work right if the potassium isn't there.
Well my biggest problem was I went to the local ER. I had my surgery at a city about 45 mins to an hour away. So granted, my local ER didn't have hardly any experience with WLS patients. As a matter of fact, I had 4 different doctors and numberous nurses (but I think most of them were the ones actually scheduled to work my room) come in that bascially wanted to look at my stomach where I was cut... They bascially said they wanted to take a look to make sure everything was healing ok.. but I think they were just curious.
But yeah they brought me this big cup of water with this 4 HUGE pills. I'm like "umm I can't take those" So she ended up dumping over half the water out and then putting the pills in there trying to get them to dissolve. It was pretty nasty. I couldn't even get one little sip of it down it was so bad. So she went and got 4 more, put them in a pill crusher and put it in applesauce. Still pretty nasty tasting but I was able to finally get them down.
They gave me a script for them, I've already gotten the say so from my surgeon that it's ok to cut pills in half and take them (I had a problem with the liquid med right after surgery so he gave me the pill form and told me to cut them in half or quarters.. as long as no bigger tha my pinky nail they would be ok to take).. So these cut in half go down pretty esaily.
It really wasn't a fun experience at all.. As of today I am exactly one month out from surgery. Hopefully this will be the only problem I have, everything is been so great up until now.
Well here it is about 22 hours later and i'm just now getting home from the ER. I had some cardiac arrhythmias and I've been hooked to an EKG monitor the entire time. Come to find out, it was caused by my potassium being so low. Whatever scale they use, it should be around a 4.5 to 5.. I wasn't even a 1 on the scale. I guess potassium is a big part of how your heart pumps the blood, it just doesn't work right if the potassium isn't there.
Well my biggest problem was I went to the local ER. I had my surgery at a city about 45 mins to an hour away. So granted, my local ER didn't have hardly any experience with WLS patients. As a matter of fact, I had 4 different doctors and numberous nurses (but I think most of them were the ones actually scheduled to work my room) come in that bascially wanted to look at my stomach where I was cut... They bascially said they wanted to take a look to make sure everything was healing ok.. but I think they were just curious.
But yeah they brought me this big cup of water with this 4 HUGE pills. I'm like "umm I can't take those" So she ended up dumping over half the water out and then putting the pills in there trying to get them to dissolve. It was pretty nasty. I couldn't even get one little sip of it down it was so bad. So she went and got 4 more, put them in a pill crusher and put it in applesauce. Still pretty nasty tasting but I was able to finally get them down.
They gave me a script for them, I've already gotten the say so from my surgeon that it's ok to cut pills in half and take them (I had a problem with the liquid med right after surgery so he gave me the pill form and told me to cut them in half or quarters.. as long as no bigger tha my pinky nail they would be ok to take).. So these cut in half go down pretty esaily.
It really wasn't a fun experience at all.. As of today I am exactly one month out from surgery. Hopefully this will be the only problem I have, everything is been so great up until now.
I had a similar situation Except my Potassium AND magnesium were very low and I was pretty dehydrated...they pumped 9 bgs of fluid into me within the first 2 days. i couldnt keep anything down. It wasn't dumping....it was just plain old dehydratation, low pot and Mag and a WICKED case of edema surrounding my surgical site.
Rest up....DON'T DO THAT ANYMORE! Hospitals are NOT a good place to get rest...LOL
Rest up....DON'T DO THAT ANYMORE! Hospitals are NOT a good place to get rest...LOL
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