Self monioring of blood pressure showed no need for additional medication

The 10:00 AM appointment at the BMT yesterday went more smoothly and rapidly than any in recent memory. There was no need to draw blood and the only vital that seemed to be required to order the Velcade from the pharmacy was my weight, which was about one kilogram higher than usual.   Craig had taken my bood pressure as 159/75 the highest I ever recall.  I told Robin, my nurse for the day about this high reading and she said she would do it again after a bit and when she did it was 139/73. She suggested that the high reading may have been due to sress from the drive in to the Hospital. This then led to me to showing her the record I had kept from my measuring my blood pressure during the week as requested by Mary Steinbach, the PA I had seen last Monday.  This task was more difficult than I had expected.  The cuff-model device that we have had for many years failed and I bought a new one recommended by the pharmacist at the Walgreens store near us.  Her recommendation was qualified in that she liked the wrist models better, but said they don't have many returns on the large cuff-model Omron.  I could not turn on the one that I bought (perhaps because it had too many features) so I took it back and got one of the wrist models.  This model showed that my blood pressure went from 148/88 to 119/73 during the rest of the week.  Robin reported that Mary was satisfied and I wouldn't need any medication for hypertension.

Robin then told me the Velcade had been ordered and she would soon go to the pharmacy to get it. She did not put a line in my port until she came back from the pharmacy.  When she did come back a little before 11:00 she put the line in and immediately administered the drug, took out the line, and dismissed me.  I would have been home before noon exscept I had to go to the Pioneer Memorial Theatre box office to exhcange tickets for a show on September 29, which conflicted with our plans to go to the Fall season of the Shakespeare Festival.  The tickets had come in Saturday's mail and I had forgotten that our first show in the 2015/16 season was coming at that time.

The visit to the Univ. of Utah Dermatolgy clinic in Murray with Emma was disappointing, to me, in that Ally Sorensen, the P.A. that the appointment was with, could not decide what the rash that had started to appear on Emma's body on the 28th of July might have been caused by, but she was able to consult with Dr. Hull, the dermatologist that Emma had wanted to see.  He was available for consultation even though he had other patients, whose appointments had been made earlier.  The rash was not continuous; it consisted of scattered reddish spots some of which had small bumps within them and all itched.  We had feared that the rashes might be a reccurrrence of the bullous pemphigoid that had afflicted her in 2010 after she broke her leg and that was quite painful, but cleared up rapidly after treatment began.  Dr. Hull said that it definitely was not pemphigoid and looked more like insect bites; not bedbug bites and not mosquito bites; but neither of them could say what kind of insect may have done the biting.  That is why I was disappointed, we had been together all the time and done the same things and I had no such rash or evidence of bites.