stressful day

Today has been quite stressful. Our son, Martin, is in Fremantle Hospital emergency ward.

For that past three days he has complained of breathlessness, fluid retention and headaches. He has also been coughing up blood and vomiting.

I collected him from his unit this morning and took him to Next Step, the government drug rehab centre where he had an appointment for 11.30am. He has been on a quite high dose of Suboxone and I thought that this was what was causing him problems.

The doctor at Next Step examined him and she thought there was a heart condition and suggested that we get him to Fremantle emergency immediately. It took a while for the machinery to get going, but he underwent a bank of tests, scans and X-Rays and they determined that he had a massive infection somewhere and also pneumonia. He was started on a drip of a diuretic and three different bags of anti-biotics. Joan went and bought him some essential toiletries and when she returned to the hospital she was told that they believe he has a blockage in one of his heart valves and that blockage is collecting other solids passing by. Tomorrow morning a camera is to be fed down a blood vessel to take a closer look.

He is destined to be in hospital for a couple of weeks if there are no real heart problems. The oedema and the pneumonia will take that long to treat. For all the complaints about the state of the public health system it certainly functions well when the condition is life threatening.