So my husband passed out, and possibly had a mild seizure, last
night. Called 911 (see thread about Vonage,) the nice paramedics
came. They took his BP and looked him over, but couldn't pinpoint a
problem, and recommended that either they or I take him to the ER. I
did.
At the ER they took his BP again, along with a chest x-ray, ran blood
tests, urinalysis, CAT scan, and EKG. So now we know a lot more about
his health than we did. He doesn't have a heart problem, a brain
tumor, diabetes, or tuberculosis. He was, however, mildly
hyponatremic -- low on sodium. They think he had a sharp momentary
drop in blood pressure as a result. He also apparently has a mild
UTI, which may have compounded the problem
So now we're left with figuring out why he's low on sodium. We don't
deliberately shun salt at all. OTOH, we eat very little processed
food, which is far and away the biggest source of sodium in the
American diet. He hadn't been drinking a ton of water (he'd had a few
drinks, but nothing unusual,) had done some yard work but nothing
grueling, or, more im****tant, serious-sweat-inducing.
Anyone have any brilliant ideas why he might be hyponatremic?
FYI -- they gave him a liter of IV saline, to bring up his sodium and
increase his blood volume. Took about an hour to drip in. At the
time I joked about squeezing the bag to speed it up. When we got home
at 3:30 am I did some quick googling (still too wound up to go
straight to bed) and learned that doing that could have caused brain
damage, up to and including inducing paraplegia, quadroplegia,
irreversible coma, or death. So that's a good thing to keep in mind:
Don't squeeze the IV bag.
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