HAPPY 72ND BIRTHDAY MUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She is currently celebrating her most recent milestone in room 14 in the Emergency Room at the DECH.
How you ask?
She was enjoying a pre-bedtime snack of dulse when a piece lodged itself in her throat and decided that it was such a nice place that why move forward.
Not so that she was choking, thankfully.
But enough that she wasn't able to drink any water.
And you don't want to know the ramifications of not being able to swallow.
Meaning how I gleaned the consequences.
Enough said.
Consequently, as I was just enjoying the end of Big Bang Theory when Stephen informed me there was a phone message from the nursing home.
Phone message. Nursing home. After 9.00 pm.
Nothing good was going to come of checking into this.
And in a likelihood, I was going to have to change from my pjs into yoga pants.
Sure enough, she was taken by ambulance to the hospital.
Oddly enough, I find this somewhat disconcerting.
The woman fell a month ago and bruised and bashed her face so harshly that she is still sporting bruises, blurred vision, and complains of pain in her head and the nursing home thought a trip to the ER wasn't necessary.
But a stuck piece of dulse warrants an ambulance ride and an overnight in the ER.
I just don't understand medicine.
My father was going to come into Fredericton (again, but that's another story) but I called him and told him to stay put.
Rain was falling faster than water over the rim of Niagara Falls, it was dark, my dad is in his 70s and his night driving isn't what it used to be.
You can imagine how quickly my guilt kicked in when my brain processed all the facts.
And the relief in his voice when I said he didn't need to come in, that I was going in.
I get to the hospital and there's my mother sitting up in the middle of the bed, hospital johnny shirt on instead of her pj top, looking like a petulant child.
No joke.
In fact at one point, she facial expression garnered the attention of a busy nurse who came in just because she was glaring at him with such intensity and ferocity.
I think she was trying to intimidate him into getting the doctor in to see her sooner rather than later.
Plus she had already taken her all her meds and was struggling to stay awake.
Over and over I asked her to just close her eyes and go to sleep, but she was determined that nothing was going to be missed by her falling asleep.
She never did like to miss anything.
Luckily for us, the ER wasn't overly busy, so the doctor actually came in to see her about an hour after we had arrived.
And after examining her, his verdict was that she was going to have a sleep over in the ER, and if the dulse continued its vigil in her throat she'd have to have a scope to remove it.
A scope requires numbing her throat and her gag reflex and the skills of a surgeon to remove the dulse.
So not the most complex procedure but invasive nonetheless.
She had been after me to leave since I had arrived and knowing she was going to spend the night in the ER she was determined that I wasn't going to spend the night with her.
I went home.
Reluctantly.
It was very late for a woman who has been going to bed every night this week by 8.30 pm.
In bed after one am is not a completely new experience for me, but one I haven't had in a significantly long time.
Waking up at 7.30 am wasn't exciting either.
A slave, yet again, to the whimsy of Frankie and Tikka's bladders.
Also an opportunity to call the hospital and see how Mum was doing.
Did she need a scope?
And the verdict. . . .
She had been sent back to the nursing home at 4.30 am, the medication she was given helped to relax her esophagus enough for the dulse to continue it's journey.
The lesson here: my mother can no longer go the bathroom or eat dulse after she's had her medication.
What next?
And this was after her birthday dinner at the Diplomat.
Which is another story for another time.
Because right now I am going back to bed.
Title Lyric: Emergency Room by Rhianna
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