Vancouver BC and Patty Health Update

September 12 - 25, 2017

As I said in the last post, Patty was not at all in good health when we got back to Vancouver BC.  We were in Vancouver for the next week and Patty was in bed for most of it.  We had plans to spend time with her nephew, Brian Schumacher, and his wife and daughter Ina & Joey. But this wasn't to be. I kept busy with hiking around the area and doing some minor work on the RV.  It looks like (sadly) we will have to see Vancouver some other time.

On our last day Patty was up and about but not completely well.  We managed a trip to Walmart for some food shopping and getting fuel for the truck.  We need the fuel to get to our next stop.  Since Patty hasn’t been well for some time we decided to take her to a hospital in the US on our next stop.  Our next stop was going to be near Tacoma Washington.  Then after her hospital visit we would take a more direct route to our winter place in south Texas.

During our drive to the states Patty felt pretty good so she decided she didn’t want or need to go to the hospital.  So we decided to take another route that wasn’t as direct to Texas.  That was all good for our leaving day, but she went downhill the next day at our first US campground in Prairie Ridge WA.  By around 8pm that night we decided she had to go to a close by hospital.  So off we went to the St. Elizabeth Hospital in Enumclaw WA.

By the time she was seen by a doctor here and since our cruise she has developed Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA).  The reason she developed DKA was due to her Diabetic Gastroparesis.  I believe that she had too much wine to drink a month earlier with friends in Lake Logan BC that upset her digestive system.  The wine upset her gastro balance giving her a gastro episode of extreme vomiting and diarrhea.  (Patty believes this is bullshit.)

It had been so long since she has had DKA that I didn’t even think of that possibility.  But when she fights off a gastro attack her blood sugar goes up and she really doesn’t have any good ways to bring it down.  Left with blood sugar too high for too long and you get DKA which is much more serious than a gastro event.  The problem is that a gastro event and DKA present the same way.  I now think that she probably developed mild DKA before the cruise and never really recovered from it.

Patty was in the hospital for 3 days and released on Saturday the 23rd of September to her insistence.  We decided to play it by ear and see how she did while we traveled. No matter how we traveled we were going south for the winter.  So we modified our travel schedule some to allow for the extra time in the hospital and to put us back in Texas a little earlier than we had planned originally.  

We had several people we were going to stop and see on our way south that we just cut out of our schedule.  Some of the reason was time but more important was she didn’t want to be sick when we were seeing people.  It has happened to us a couple of times now where we have planned to visit someone and she is sick the whole time.

The day after her hospital stay we ventured out to the Washington State Fair.  Today, Sunday was the last day of the fair too. Patty felt like she was OK to go so went as it was a great day weather wise, 70s and full sun. We went with the understanding that she started to feel bad we would leave.

One of 4 entrances to the Washington State Fair

Love that it says Texas Sized!  But look at the number of turkey legs!

Cool Coke bike!  Both of these bikes are at the Orange County Chopper tent.  That is Orange County NY by the way.

Patty with the mascot of the fair

This is where the turkey legs were coming from.  Oh, the truck is from Texas too!

The Washington State Fair is really big!  We managed to walk around and through most of it.  We really needed more time to see and experience all of it. But 4 hours was enough time to get the flavor of it and we didn't want to push Patty too hard her first day out of the hospital.

Our last day in Washington State we took a short hike on the foothills trail. The trail is very close to our site in the RV park we are staying in.  The trail runs about 20 miles and we just did 2.5 miles one way for a total of 5 miles.  The trail is very flat so it was an easy trail to hike on.  Patty did fine on the hike.  I am hoping she is back to good health now.  We just need to be careful of her eating pattern.

After the trail ride went out to eat here at Bootleggers.  We probably would not recommend this place.  It advertised as a restaurant bar.  It really is a Bar that happens to have a small restaurant. I had the worst fish and chips here.

We left Prairie Ridge on Tuesday the 26th and headed south to Portland Oregon.

Some pictures of Mt. Hood from our travels around the area

Our future south travel plan is to travel to Portland OR, Bend OR, Reno/Lake Tahoe NV, Death Valley NV, Las Vegas NV, Congress AZ, Tucson AZ, Marfa TX, and then to our winter site in Elsa TX.  We are planning to arrive at our winter place around the 1st of November.

So this will do it for our post about Patty’s health and our travel plans going south for the winter.

Hopefully the next post we will have a better feeling about her health so we can continue to enjoy our travel.

Stay Tuned!!