It keeps going, and going...

The last few days have been crazy. I spent Wednesday in town getting my stuff done. I had a physical therapy appointment and then in the afternoon I had to go to a make up class. (Not learning how to do cosmetics, I was making up for missing a class to take Donny to ER.) That evening I was supposed to go to work, but when the boss brought his kids by trick or treating he let me know that he still wasn't ready for me to come in. I ended up passing out candy. Which made trying to eat dinner an interesting ordeal.

Thursday morning I took my grandma to her doctor's appointment. This was with the doctor that I don't like. He was so bad that I made my mom switch doctors. (Which has worked out very well for her.) Dr. Late has been doing better lately, but I still don't like him. My grandma had a 10:50 appointment. I figured that left plenty of time for me to leave town at 12:15 to go to my physical therapy appointment. Boy was I wrong.

At 11:16 my grandma was called back to have her vitals done and be put in a room. At 11:55 I went out and found somebody who works there to point out that we were still waiting and I needed to leave town in 15 minutes. At 12:10 the doctor came in to see my grandma. I know that doctors are busy people, and that their time is valuable. I'm busy and my time is valuable too. And you just put me behind schedule for other appointments. It really pissed me off.

After my physical therapy appointment my mom and I went to a big city that's about an hour away from us to go pick up my cousin. He had my aunt worried because he told her that he had nowhere to stay until he turns himself in on the 8th. (Yep, he's spending the holidays in jail, and he can't wait to get there.) He told his mom that he was sleeping under a bridge. On Saturday my parent's had gone up to get him, but he had decided to stay there. And he pulled the same damn stunt again. After having us run from one side of town to the other and back again several times, he decided to stay with a friend there. So we let him know that we wouldn't come rescue him again, and managed to get home around bed time.

I had plans for Friday. My mom and I were supposed to get my 2 year old nephew in the morning and take him swimming. After swimming we were going to the park until it was time to meet his mom for lunch. And then in the afternoon I would go to work, since I still needed to get this week's stuff done. In the evening I was going to do homework to get ready for class today.

What ended up happening was that my nephew slept in until it was too late to go swimming. In fact, by the time we got him dressed and ready for the day, and got the extra errands that we were given at the last minute done, we barely had time to go meet my cousin who's a truck driver for lunch. He happened to be passing through a town about 20 miles away at lunch time, so we got to visit with him. It was great to see him again.

After lunch we returned the kid, having properly wore him and us out. I came home ready for a nap, only to realize that my husband had now slept for 2 days. This was not a good sign. I managed to wake him up, but it was really difficult. He was not exactly "with it" mentally, so I knew we had a problem. I went in my mom's room, had a nervous breakdown, and then asked her to make some sandwiches to take to the hospital. It took an hour, but I got Donny to get in the car so we could go get him some medical help.

We got to the hospital around 5:30 and it was already a mad house. Yesterday seemed to be the day for toddlers falling and hitting there heads on sharp corners. It was amazing the number of little ones there with head injuries. It was 6:40 when Donny got triaged. I only remember so well because we were discussing the fact that it was almost change of shift. The triage nurse decided that she really liked me when I offered to reset the clocks to say 7:00. I really think that 12 hour shifts are cruel and unusual punishment.

Somewhere around 8:00 admitting finally did the paperwork to get the insurance to pay for Donny's visit. It was around 8:30 when he was taken to a bed. Not as bad as I had feared time wise. Friday night in ER sucks. I strongly urge you to do everything in your power to avoid going to ER then. I've yet to find an ER that's not crazy on a Friday night, but definitely avoid the county hospital at that time. It's not a pretty picture.

I think it was somewhere between 10:30 and 11:30 when we got Donny's lab results back and I knew that he wouldn't be admitted. It was a long time until the doctor said that, but with an ammonia level of 54 I knew that he didn't need to be there. It was around 2:00 I think when the doctor said that all we were waiting on was for Donny to wake up and pee. She wanted to run some urine tests, and we weren't leaving there without them. The nurse and I woke him up and wouldn't let him go back to sleep until he peed. That did the trick.

It was 4:00 when he was finally discharged. I'm glad that the doctor was so thorough. We found out that he has a UTI because she insisted on some tests that the nurse and I thought were pointless. Needless to say, school didn't happen today. Later I have got to remember to tell you about some of our other experiences last night.