So, an update is probably in order. Some of you may have seen this already, since I livetweeted it as it was going on, but after being unable to reach my NP on Wednesday and report a lack of progress, I decided enough was enough and went to the Emergency Room of my local hospital. Unfortunately, Wednesday was a very busy night at the Emergency Room of my local hospital, so I didn't get back out of there until nearly three o'clock Thursday morning, but at least I did come out with a diagnosis: urinary tract infection.

Those of you who have been here a while may remember that I had one of those in the summer of 2019, too, from which I had just recovered when I fell and bashed up my knee. According to the ER nurse, that's pretty common in MS patients, particularly men. So that's something to look forward to.

On the plus side, that's not communicable, so Dad's probably in the clear. Because one of the key symptoms I was reporting with was fever, though, they had to handle me as a prospective COVID patient under the protocols currently in force, which included taking a test swab. I should hear about that sometime in the next few days.

The COVID protocol had one unforeseen and deeply infuriating side effect: As I was getting ready to leave after being handed my discharge paperwork, the ER nurse told me, "Since you have a pending COVID test, you can't leave through the lobby. You'll have to go out through the ambulance bay."

The way the hospital here is laid out, the main entrance is in the middle of one of the long sides of the building, with the disabled parking places at the end of a little covered portico thing off to the right. The ambulance bay is around the left side of the building.

So, to get to the disabled parking--and thus my car--from the ambulance bay, I had to basically walk halfway around the building. At 2:30 in the morning, dog-tired and feverish, on my not-always-reliable MS-boy feet, through around three inches of freshly fallen snow. Maybe a hundred yards? That probably doesn't sound like very far to normal people, but I don't have those license plates because they look cool.

And, yeah, OK, abundance of caution, you don't want people who Might Have COVID wandering through a crowded lobby, maybe passing people in the entryway, and so on if you can avoid it. But it was 2:30 in the morning! There was nobody out there. And not, like, nobody except the night receptionist, no one at all. After midnight, you have to ring a bell and someone comes out of the ER.

I was too tired to be properly pissed off about that at the time--it was more a sort of baffled, annoyed disbelief with a big dash of resignation--but I'm pretty riled up about that part now.

Anyway, so here I am, taking antibiotics and Tylenol, and drinking a lot of beverages with "Cran-" in their names, and things seem to be settling down. I still feel pretty poor, but I'm not having the heavy chills or noting any significant fever tonight.

Meanwhile, one of the reasons the ER was busy that night was because my mother was in there, having finally broken down and gone in to see if they could find out why her energy levels have cratered these past few weeks. That night, all they turned up was acute anemia, but not what the cause was. They admitted her for observation, with an endoscopy scheduled for Thursday morning in order to check out the leading theory, a bleeding stomach ulcer (something she's had before).

The scope revealed that she does not have a bleeding ulcer... she has four bleeding ulcers.

So that's special.

She's still in the hospital while they try to get a handle on what to do next, but I talked to her a bit ago and she said they were probably going to send her home tomorrow.

On the plus side, class yesterday wasn't that much of a disaster. I only have a week to come up with a topic for the big research paper that is the centerpiece of the whole course, but one crisis at a time.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.