Another Trip to the ER

It was a fine Monday afternoon. I was in my ruby red car ("Petunia"), on the highway, on my way to see my beloved, listening with satisfaction to the audio version of Pride and Prejudice, when my dash display indicated an incoming call from a number I didn't recognize. Because the hospice folks call from their cell phones, I do my best to answer now, just in case. I always hope it's a spam call, though, because calls from hospice or the facility always throw me into panic mode. There has simply been so much stress, so many not-so-good-news calls, and so many fight-or-flight reactions that my heart automatically skips a beat. Breathe in. Breathe out slowly. Breathe in. Breathe out slowly. Stay calm.

I pressed the answer button on my steering wheel. It was the facility, and the voice of the medical technician came through the speakers. My husband had suffered a major seizure as he was walking; hit his head while falling, unconscious, to the floor; and been unresponsive long enough to cause alarm before "coming to." Hospice had been called, and the hospice doctor deemed it best to send my husband to the emergency room for a CT scan to rule out a brain bleed. If so, it would be an important thing to know.

Somehow, I managed to maintain my composure behind the wheel, arriving at the facility just as his  ambulance was leaving. I followed, and within minutes he'd been transferred to the emergency room, where I tried to keep him calm and comfortable while we waited. His blood pressure, heart rate, pulse, oxygenation, and temperature were all normal.  I was happy that it wasn't necessary to draw blood, do an IV, or try to get a urine sample. Sticking him with needles would have caused him such distress, and he was trying to pull off the monitoring gadgets that were fastened to him as it was.

Ultimately, the CT scan results were also okay, though that experience was good for a chuckle:  "Ma'am, we need your husband to lay flat on his back and keep his head very still for this," said the technician. My response? "Good luck with that!" But they somehow managed, my husband was discharged and returned to the facility, and that was that.

I stayed with him for several hours, watching over him so he wouldn't be alone. Just in case. It wasn't exactly the kind of visit I had hoped to have with him, but all's well that ends well.

By the way, in case you're wondering about his weight, it had to be checked twice again this month. When I asked if he'd been weighed and his chart was checked, the weight shown seemed too high. I asked that he be weighed again, and he seems to weigh the same as last month. But who knows? It would be fantastic to have confidence in that number.