My mum has been admitted to hospital with pneumonia. They took her by ambulance last night since I wasn’t able to leave the house to pick her up–not because it was that urgent.
But anyway, funny story.
I just got off the phone with one of the nurses in the emergency department. Apparently my mother is concerned that she doesn’t have her teeth. She must have taken them out before she was transported, so the nurse asked me if I could go get them and bring them in.
My response: That has to be one of the most interesting things I’ve even been asked to do.
Well, for a birthday, it’s been one unexpected thing after another. Let me tell you about it.
It started out with the school buses not running, but I knew that ahead of time. Because Alex was starting to go stir crazy yesterday, and because he had an appointment with a speech and language pathologist at lunch time at the school, I’d decided to drive him in anyway. So I began my day by shoveling my car out of the driveway. Turned out I didn’t need to do it first thing, because my best friend, John, came to my rescue and took Alex to school.
I still needed to be there for the appointment, however, so I had a shower–my birthday present to me–and drove to the school where I met the speech pathologist. Lo and behold, she’s fluent in sign language. Wonderful! What a lovely surprise that was!
After that, I came home and tried to get as caught up on my social media and all the kind birthday wishes, as well as try to promote my book sale. Then I had to drive back to the school to get Alex, because no buses.
I got home and we had pizza for dinner–no cooking!–and I got back to my laptop for some more catching up. Then my mother called to say she spent the day in bed, she was very sweaty, and the nurse had been talking about sending her to the hospital today. But my mum had no idea why. So I put in a call to the nurse at the retirement home. Apparently–wait for it–a few of the residents have had pneumonia, and my mother hasn’t been doing so well. They’ll keep an eye on her tonight, and if they have to send her by ambulance, they will. I explained I can’t get away–I have Alex to look after.
Just as I was putting Alex to bed, I got a call from his brother. His bus didn’t show up. So off I went to drive him to work for 11pm.
Meanwhile, we’re expecting freezing rain tomorrow, so probably no buses. And I doubt I’ll want to drive either. There’s about six inches of snow on my street, and if that freezes over, it’s going to be an ice rink out there.
What does all this have to do with curiosity?
I’m not the slightest bit curious about how my day tomorrow is going to go.
I’m happy and content to spend the rest of my birthday oblivious to what might await me.
Just livin’ in the moment.
Thank you so much to everyone for their wonderful birthday wishes today! They really helped me get through what was an otherwise trying day. And it’s entirely possible that they kept it from being worse! ❤
It’s been a long day. My companion for the day was Alex–he didn’t go to school. His cough was bad enough this morning that I decided to wait and see if sitting up would help. It did, but then he slept most of the morning.
He lazed around for most of the rest of the day, only really getting up to build some Lego with my best friend, John.
He’s sleeping again now–the worry isn’t over.
I look forward to going back to this not being the only thing on my mind.
He finally slept last night, and now that he’s off the IV antibiotics, they decided to release Alex from the hospital. He’s still coughing, but hopefully that’ll go away by the time the oral antibiotics are done this time.
Of course, as soon as he sat on the couch at home he fell asleep. I hope his nap doesn’t mean he’ll be up half the night.
In other news, he has an appointment with his cardiologist tomorrow. I’ll schedule the post requesting the prompt words for the rest of the month tomorrow afternoon when I think I’ll be home. In case I’m not, I’ll be counting on you to read the rules! Watch out for that at 1pm EST.
He’s still in hospital. He had two hours of sleep last night and one more hour when I arrived at the hospital this morning at 4:00am, because I made him lay down.
He’s still on his feet.
Total sleep since Sunday (01/13) morning: four hours. It is now Tuesday, 9:40pm.
Hoping he’ll come home tomorrow. It’s boring enough here to allow him to doze off.
Thanks to all who commented on my last post. I appreciate the good thoughts and prayers, more than you know.
Before I start really writing this post, I have to mention that I’m punch drunk from staying up for thirty-four hours. I feel like my eyeballs are swimming in frontal lobe fluid, if there is such a thing. So I apologize in advance if this post isn’t grammatically correct, sensical, or replete with the correct amount of outrage, though that last one really shouldn’t be a problem.
You see, after I wrote last night that if I didn’t show up until late today, I was probably dealing with some challenges, I tried to put Alex to bed and failed. He began coughing, then he began having a hard enough time breathing that I figured it was time for the hospital. We arrived there at about 10:40pm.
But of course when he wasn’t laying down, he wasn’t that bad. So we sat. And sat, and sat. I’m not sure what time it was when he got a room with a bed–1:30 maybe?–but I remember looking at the clock at 4:44 when he was getting his IV in. They brought me a breakfast at 5 … Saw the second doctor of the night at 9:30 … Got a room on the floor (he was admitted with pneumonia, again) at about 3:15, and I got out of there at 4pm. I think I slept for about 45 minutes, sitting in a chair. And Alex did no better. The few times he dropped off other than the 45 minutes he got when I slept, they woke him up after 3 minutes of sleep.
He was still refusing to lay down when I left.
So yeah, all that to say Alex is back in the hospital for at least one night. And I’m falling asleep while I tyepzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I woke up from nine hours of sleep this morning and called the hospital before I got out of bed. The nurse I spoke to was a nice lady named Heather who introduced herself as someone who used to work at Alex’s school, so she knows a bit of sign language.
She told me he had a good night and was up early, out of bed, and following his nurse (the one on shift from last night) around in the corridors. He got tired of his IV, probably when another IV pole with his feeding pump was added to the mix, so he unhooked the IV. They left it off.
When Heather came in at 7:00, he took one look at her and knowing she had the ability to tell him off in ASL, he went back to bed.
“That was a couple of hours ago though,” she told me. “Now he’s following me around.”
He was doing okay, so I decided to have a shower and take my time getting to the hospital. Only to immediately be told to go home when I got there … by Alex. I sent this text to my best friend, John:
At the hospital waiting to see the doctor. Alex wants me to go home. I’m cramping his style. Sitting alone in his room while he hangs out with the nurses.
To which John replied:
I can sympathize. It’s hard to woo a nurse with your mom around.
So he’s obviously feeling better. But they wanted to keep him one more night for observation. His oxygen levels are still very low when he’s laying down, his heart rate is still through the roof, and he’s still working to breathe.
Hopefully he’ll be home tomorrow and all the heart issues will have arisen from the combination of the pneumonia and the extra drugs. And hopefully the antibiotics will work their miracle.
Thank you again for all your awesome well-wishes. I appreciate each and every one.
I’m going to invite everyone to re-blog, tweet, and otherwise share this post today. We all wish our posts got that much love, but this one is important. If you are a man, love a man, or maybe both, this post is important.
I debated long and hard about sharing this at all. It involves personal information, and I like to keep a bit of privacy. I had to weigh the fact that my mother reads this blog, along with at least two co-workers, against the possibility of helping someone else. Someone else won.
Popular rumor holds that a man should have certain things checked medically once he turns 50. In typical male fashion, I waited until I was 53 and 8 months to schedule my colonoscopy. This is a degrading procedure that involves shoving a camera into places that aren’t visible by design. I thought it was degrading, but…
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