Hi Gio. Where online would you suggest for reserching meds that is trust worthy?

Giovanna wrote:

Forward leaning dizziness, trouble sleeping, and drowsiness all sound like sleep apnea caused by congestion. Does he have a stuffy nose during the day?

Increased hunger can be lots of things, but the first I'd want to rule out is diabetes. Does he have it? Is he also thirsty a lot?

Has his blood pressure been evaluated lately? Unfortunately at 65, diagnosing these kinds of problems gets complicated, and there's more risk in doing so. I would suggest he visit a doc and get a workup. Sleep apnea, potential diabetes, and potential hypertension are hugely dangerous if they're uncontrolled, and totally manageable if they are. It may be none of those things, but it's definitely something worth investigating.

His nose isn't stuffy. No, but our doctor once told us he was borderline diabetic. I hope that's not what it is since he's ripe for getting it. That would explain his glaucoma, wouldn't it?  He's no thirstier than usual.

His blood pressure was 140/80 last March during his yearly physical. He says thanks and he's going to schedule another here soon.

To be honest there's not a whole lot you can do with over-stressed muscle sore. Ibuprofen, in my experience, works better than Tylenol. The best thing is stretching the muscles. Every four hours or so, give them a good yank, and don't be too idle. Sore muscles respond best to small amounts of constant use.

To be honest, not really. We haven't really banged out what causes canker sores or how to get rid of them best, but there seems to be a hormonal component. A lot of women get them around their period. I must be colonized with a bacteria that likes to cause them because virtually any time I bite my lip I get one.

For the most part, tedious use of Listerine and salt water washings seem to be the best treatment plan, aside from Canker Covers, with are outrageously expensive and take up half your mouth. They're almost as inconvenient as the sore and a thousand times more expensive, but they will resolve them in a day or so, which is nice if you're on vacation or something.

Ordinarily they can, it's done quite frequently in the US, because hey, that's how the shit has to work. That said, the US health care system isn't a unified consistent entity but rather a vast array of small and corporate level businesses. Which means some will treat your private health information as a product they possess and they don't like to hand it out--for free. Including to you. I've had to pay for copies of my lab results to show the college I went to that I didn't have hepatitis or something. Unfortunately as far as I know most states don't have any legislation making this illegal, and the fact that there's legislation that makes your private information SUPER SECRET AND NOT TO BE SHOWN TO ANYONE EVER allows some facilities to hold onto it even tighter.

Unfortunately the only ways around this are the 1. check the policies of every facility to use for these things, and if you're stuck, 2. get copies of the records yourself and give them to the other facility. A facility CANNOT refuse to give you test results and such, they can only charge you if they're assholes. You can say all you want that it's okay to share the information between the two facilities, but neither will want the legal responsibility of obtaining the information or releasing it--they want that to be on you. That said some things are almost impossible to obtain. For example I've never heard of a place giving anyone copies of nurses notes. The best that can happen there is you might be able to read them under supervision. There are reasons for this, but most involve legal protection of staff.

Gah, this kind of blows, but I've got to ask. I've developed a kind of ulcer on the inside of my top lip flap thing. Not sure how, or why (probably stress, I don't know) but it hurts like hell. It's affecting my job, that requires a lot of speaking, which irritates it further and causes more pain.

How fix, (Hello) Nurse?

Hi Nurse Spadaro! I'm not sure if this is really a nurse question rather than one for a pharmacologist, or perhaps md. I've done some (very) cursory searching on it, and not found an answer yet. I certainly don't expect you to do any looking into this in place of me, but in case you do know out of hand....

I'm curious what the mechanism of Depakote Extended Release (Na Divalproic Acid? Divalproex? ... sodium hydrogen bis(2-propylpentanoate) more specifically I guess, although I'm not sure if this is the ER version or not... and my o. chem is bad enough I can't visualize that anymore) is relating to epilepsy. Is the sodium simply in there to make it take longer to dissolve (hence extended), or is the sodium in there because it's playing a role in the sodium/calcium/chlorine/etc concentrations that are involved in transmitting nerve impulses? Or something else entirely?

I understand that it's used to treat some autism symptoms as well as depression/bipolar/manic disorder in some people too. And have been curious what the relationship is between that and epilepsy (if any? to the extent the same drug impacts all, at least in some cases?) for some time. I guess I'm interested in that because I feel in the past I could probably have self-diagnosed myself with one of those other things too (being aware that self-diagnosing is an awful, misguided, terrible idea). So I've been wondering if there's any link between epilepsy and any of those on the basis that the same drug impacts symptoms of both. But I haven't asked my neurologist for whatever reason, and it's a trivial enough issue I'm not about to spend a few hundred dollars scheduling an unnecessary appointment with him just for that right now.

But yeah, if you happened to know either how this stuff works, or how epilepsy is/isn't related to those other disorders, that would be really cool. Not sure why I'm asking now since this has been kicking around in my head for awhile, but hey. Weird questions kick around my head when I haven't slept in too long, I think. But if you know that'd be awesome. And if not, no worries. Seriously - don't spend time looking into it just on my behalf.

Last edited by Valeli (04-25-2013 04:26:26 PM)

I know I'm not a doctor, but I do remember hearing that the main theory for why drugs that treat epilepsy can also treat bipolar disorder is because they think that they have a similar origin and effect the same areas in the brain. Some people have been known to be misdiagnosed with one disease when they actually have the other, because they can sometimes present with outwardly similar symptoms. When I was a kid, the first thing I was suspected of having was some form of epilepsy, because I would have horrible dissociating panic attacks, generally turning into a destructive hurricane with no sense of awareness of anything around me for a couple of hours. When the other 90% of the time you're a well behaved shy and sensitive kid, it's pretty jarring, and my parents were convinced these fits were my only problem. But it got ruled out quickly and my symptoms started to manifest in different ways. I also knew somebody who was the flipside, temporal lobe epilepsy, that was mistaken for something on the bipolar spectrum early on. Epilepsy and bipolar actually have the same theory of deterioration over time, it's called the kindling theory. Anything at this point is all theory, but it is pretty established that there is some type of correlation between epilepsy and bipolar. What that is, nobody is entirely sure of

Seizures don't usually manifest only as visual symptoms. Too specific a function (or dysfunction) of the brain for that. They're also very difficult to diagnose--seizures are really only ever diagnosed based on presentation, since you need to see the brain in dysaction, so to speak, to know that's the problem. If he's had an MRI and/or CT of the head and they've come up clear, there's probably nothing dangerous going on up there if he's had it all his life with no change in presentation or other symptoms.

I would have his eyes checked, though, in case there's something going on there. Eyes, frankly, are way more fragile than brains.

Bon soir, Nurse Spadaro.

I woke up today covered in blood.

My nose apparently thought it was a good idea to just gush out a torrent sanguine goop onto me in my sleep.

It continued for a few hours and then clotted a bit. I haven't done anything strenuous since Saturday, and haven't been scratching at it. I'm thinking maybe a vessel rupture? I dunno.

Thoughts, (Hello!) Nurse?

Last edited by TheOnlyFlorence (05-14-2013 08:21:59 PM)

Giovanna wrote:

Absolutely possible! Things that could have made it worse: nose sprays for congestion, especially prescriptions. Dry weather.

Give it another couple days but then work toward business as usual. If it happens again, go to a doctor. It'll probably be nothing, but could need to be burned off.

So far, it hasn't returned. Haven't been on nose sprays in years, so I'm thinking weather would be it, yeah?

Burned off? What... what is that?

satyreyes wrote:

I think she was kidding.

It could be slang for cauterization.