Updates – Friday, 8-22-2025

@DavidJSalter on X. – isn’t this a wonderful drawing?

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My husband Harvey was transported by ambulance to the Intensive Care Unit at Bangkok Hospital in Chiang Mai two days ago for fever, cough, pneumonia and low blood oxygen. Thankfully, they were able to get him on antibiotics for the pneumonia, and clearing that up will take care of the fever, cough, and low blood oxygen. He was released to go back to the nursing home last night.

We went to see him in the hospital the two days, and then in the nursing home this morning, so we could see for ourselves that he is better. He was more alert. He wasn’t talking much, but he was nodding at the things we were telling him, explaining what had happened to him, reassuring him that the antibiotics would make him feel better, plus filling him in on news about the family, etc.

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I got the results of my labwork from the doctor via email yesterday. When I first saw her in May, the BIG concern was my sky high blood pressure – into the stroke zone. They took my blood pressure so many times I lost count, and she put me on a strong combination medicine to try to bring my pressure down as quickly as possible. She told me I needed to lose weight, exercise, and was also bit concerned about some of the numbers on my lab work.

When I went in follow up this week, she was SO pleased with my weight loss, blood pressure under good control, and my lab work, she said I didn’t need to come back in follow up for six months! The only suggestion she had for me was to drink more water. THAT I can handle! 😛

My goals between now and my follow up are –

• to get to my goal weight and start maintenance habits on eating that will keep me there.
• to continue to exercise to get stronger and improve my balance. (I’m working on getting to the “12-3-30 method” on the treadmill where I walk on a 12% incline at a speed of 3mph for 30 minutes. This morning I used the 1st 5 minutes to get the incline up to 12%, then walked for 10 minutes, then took it down to 11% for the rest of the time. Hopefully, I’ll be with the program completely tomorrow morning. I’m watching my heartbeats-per-minute carefully to make sure I don’t overdo.) I’m also doing a session of yoga stretches daily, plus exercises with water bottle weights.
• to get into the habit of drinking enough water daily so that my uric acid number next time will be in the normal range.

All in all, though my husband’s adventures for the week were pretty scary, the results on both of us are good, and for that I am very thankful.