And so, early that Friday, the lady drove her husband to Danbury Hospital, the emergency room closest to the couple’s small Connecticut city. He walked in on his personal. It was the final time he would stroll with out assist for weeks.
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He was admitted to the hospital. Neurology was consulted and did an in depth work-up: blood checks, CT scans, an M.R.I., an EEG, a spinal faucet. While there have been some abnormalities, nothing defined his speedy psychological and bodily decline. There was no signal of an infection or tumor. No proof of seizures. His vitamin ranges had been regular. And the gastritis he had earlier that spring was responding nicely to a every day acid-reducing medicine, pantoprazole.
Although he had the stiffness and tremor that will be typical of a affected person with Parkinson’s, his speedy decline was not. Creutzfeldt-Jakob illness may cause a quickly progressive psychological and bodily incapacity, however neither the EEG nor the M.R.I. confirmed any proof of the uncommon illness. One factor frightened his spouse: He was taking a really excessive dose of Pepto-Bismol — 4 drugs a day — which had been prescribed for the gastritis. When an excessive amount of Pepto-Bismol causes issues, it’s normally due to an overload of the aspirin-like compound within the drugs, however after they checked, that degree was regular.
Finally, after 5 days of intense investigation, the neurologists had discovered nothing and determined to refer him to a neurologist at Yale University. While he wasn’t sick sufficient to must be within the hospital, his medical doctors and spouse agreed that he was too weak to go residence. Instead, he was despatched to a short-term rehabilitation heart, the place he might get the care he wanted and probably a few of his power again.
It was night by the point the person and his spouse arrived at CareOne’s River Glen Health Care Center in Southbury, Conn. Nicole DiCenso, the nurse on obligation, got here to see the affected person as soon as he acquired to his room. Right from the beginning, DiCenso thought there was one thing odd about his story. He seemed wholesome and powerful — fitter than her mother and father, who had been about his age. And but when she tried to maneuver him to the chair scale to weigh him, she was stunned that he was too weak to maneuver himself to the sting of the mattress — even together with her assist. It was laborious to reconcile his profound incapacity along with his spouse’s report that he had been strolling 10 to fifteen miles a day simply weeks earlier. It seemed as if the vigor had by some means been sucked out of his physique, leaving his muscular tissues current however powerless.
