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Show 393 I had called my home health nurse for yet another order to decrease the dosage but Dr. Emerson has called me back directly. I have not startled for two months now, perhaps a record. But I continue to seem to need less Baclofen. "It isn't like the overdose-under-dose cycle I used to have," I am saying. "There is no underdose. It's just overdose. It doesn't make sense." I am remembering that the pump is at least five years old and as I share this with him, we wonder if perhaps, in its old age, it is simply dumping the Baclofen into the spinal fluid. Dr. Emerson doubts it. My immediate concern, however, is that I will simply stop breathing during the night, not ever knowing that I am once again in overdose. We are now turning the pump down by large amounts nearly every day and it is now likely that I may indeed overdose in my sleep. "Why don't we ask one of your home health nurses to spend the night there, waking you up from time to time?" he is suggesting. It appears that he understands how very much I wish to remain home. Several nurses have volunteered for the past month to take, the night shift at our home. I am sleeping on a makeshift bed on the floor in the front room for Hy's privacy. The nurses are supposed to awaken me every hour, or more often if it appears that I am not moving. |