Tuesday night Art fell down as he prepared to take a shower in the late evening. I was already asleep, inconveniently out in my treehouse, where I’ve been sleeping all summer. Not that he even tried yelling for me – I speculate that I might not have heard him even if I’d been sleeping in the attic.
He was unable to get up, and he was suffering extreme dizziness and debilitating nausea and vomiting in the toilet, on the floor, on the walls.
I found him when I came in to get myself breakfast at 4:30 AM.
We got him a bit cleaned up, and escorted upstairs. Wrangling him directly to the car seemed uncalled for – we had been down this path before, and it was exactly the same in every respect. You can read about his last severe episode of “fall + dizziness + nausea” at these two blog posts: Caveat: POW, emergency and Caveat: Less Uncivilized Than You’d Think.
This experience was very much a replay of that one.
I let him sleep all day, and we controlled the nausea with some leftover medication, Ondansetron, that had worked that time before. When the dizziness was unabated at dinner time, I set up a semi-emergency appointment at the SEARHC clinic in Klawock for the next morning (Thursday).
We went in, they put him on IV for rehydration (he was severely dehydrated, which I knew but I can’t make him drink water, can I?) and did X-rays for broken bones and a CT scan to see if it was stroke-related (just like last time). And just like last time, it was not stroke related. Mostly dehydration combined with a minor concussion from one of his falls (he had several subsequent to the initial one, because I can’t tie him down, either, and he doesn’t really seem capable of mentally assimilating that he might be better off not trying to move around for a while).
We’re back home and he’s resting again. Still dizzy. Still with medicinally controlled nausea.
I have returned to sleeping in the attic, and Art is staying in the main bedroom rather than his cave down in the boathouse. So I’ll hear if anything more happens. But I suspect that just like last time, this will pass without any clear idea what had happened.
Meanwhile, I’m sticking close to home. I’m grateful to my coworkers Jan and Chad for understanding my need to miss a day on Wednesday.
