A Day Well Spent

I was looking forward to this morning, Paul's last morning in camp. Four whole hours of uninterrupted time all by myself! A rare occurrence given all that's happened these last few months. What with being with my mother in the hospital, or visiting her in the rehab place, or making sure Paul got his schoolwork done, or finishing work, time for myself had been precious.

Should I do some much-needed shopping, finally get a pedicure, work on some long-postponed cleaning, browse books in the public library (one of my favorite activities), or just sit around on my new porch watching Arrested Development episodes on Netflix? It all sounded pretty good.

But then came word from the rehab place that something was wrong and Mom needed to get to a doctor right away. The sub pubic catheter which the hospital had put in to help her regain urinary control wasn't working right and I had to get her downtown to the urologist's for an emergency morning appointment. His initial take was that the catheter was fine, but he arranged for a colleague at an area hospital to do a scan to be sure.

So off we went to the hospital's outpatient offices where Mom was admitted, prepped, and then waited and waited until she was finally taken for the scan as an "add-on" patient. A long eight hours after the 10:00 appointment, it was found that the catheter had to be completely replaced and that Mom had an infection, most likely from the catheter becoming dislodged. The good news was that the problem had been caught in time, before damage was done to her bladder. She left with a new catheter in place and a prescription for an antibiotic.

All in all, a day well spent.