Okay, I'm alive.
So the chorus has spoken. The Internal Medicine doc, once she got with the program (long story for later), the endo and the cardio have finally reached a consensus. I am going to give the short and vague version for now, which is also pretty brain-fogged.
IM decided that the switch to HC caused this. It is not common, but it happens (although everyone said no, she said yes). They have basically treated it as crisis-symptoms, although they cannot say for sure if it was actually crisis starting (but probably). For whatever reason, HC just wasn't really working right. I was given the rest of my 35mg HC dose yesterday, then at 2am (love docs who don't know the rules about giving steroids at bedtime) gave me a "load dose" of 90 - yes ninety - mg of Prednisone. Today/tonight I am receiving another 40mg, and I will be weaned down from there. And yes, I did verify this with the endo, and I also talked to a couple of nurses, and everyone assured me this was not crazy. I was a little freaked. Not surprisingly, I got about 2 hours total of sleep last night, but I got some sleepy drugs for tonight, so WOOHOO!
Since the load dose at 2am, my heart has stabalized somewhat. It is still close to 100 resting, but that is considered acceptable to the medical establishment. It no longer jumps to 120 when I just sit up. In fact, they had a physical therapist visit with me, and even during walking up and down the hall I did not spike my heart rate more than they felt was okay.
I am on strict bedrest - must have someone around to even go pee - but I hope as I continue feeling better, they will start getting me up and around. I want to feel comfortable getting around, at least some, before I leave.
The cardiologist has stepped out. I had a mega-episode Monday night, and nothing showed up on the heart monitor. I've been monitored 24/7 since I got here, and that hasn't shown anything, either. And with all the med changes, he said it wasn't really beneficial at this point to do a tilt-table or anything. He is going to check on me in the morning, though.
We are guessing I will go home late tomorrow or Friday. I would think they would want to know better how stable I am and have me moving around better - without a freaking alarm on my bed and a "severe fall risk" sign on the door - before I go home.
The P.T. told me I'm not too bad; she showed me some exercises to do while sitting to help me out, then she will be back tomorrow. But she was limited as to what she could recommend before knowing whether this was something to push through until fatigued, past fatigued, or stop before fatigued.
That's all I can think of. Trey is headed home to spend some time with Audrey, and I will try to get on later and post more. My little bro is here so I will commandeer his computer later, because I get what I want. 
Thank you for the thoughts and prayers. I've thought of updating you more than my parents (well, there's a lot there, but still...) Frankly, you now know ten times more than they do, because that's been their interest level. Oh well. Family, what can you do?
Hopefully more for later,
Cynthia
