A week ago I wrote here about an email I received. Another blogger, Big Mama, knew my daughters, Barb at A Chelsea Morning, and Bev at Scratchin' The Surface would love getting pictures of houses we'd lived in while in Texas. Big Mama had grown up in the same area, and was going there. She got directions to the houses, and sent pictures of them to my daughters, and her kind thoughfulness to do this unleashed a dirge in me more feverish than rows of dominos, quickly falling.

I wasn't surprised strong feelings rushed out when I saw again where a big chunk of marriage and raising the children was lived. but it did seem to me the boiling growl in my belly was extreme. Feeling nostalgic wouldn't have surprised me. Big amounts of frustration and disappointment, and anger I seldom set free, all those long buried parts of my life there came at me, and I hardly knew what to do with them.

I kept at my book, more fitfully than my stomach was turning. Figuring out what I wanted to say, and writing even a few paragraphs wore me down. like an old saying I'd heard, I didn't have enough energy to cuss a cat. Sometimes a sudden sweat would rise up, from my chin toward the top of my head. (I know, Southen ladies aren't suppose to do that) But it was a sweat. The growling in my belly didn't keep me awake, at least not then, but was there enough I knew it hadn't left. Doing much of anything in the house, or going somewhere was too much to even start, And I realized I'd hardly eaten.

Feeling bad like this was scary, and after I woke up in the night from the misery of it, I watched the symptoms more closely. I am so healthy, people get tired of hearing about it. and I sleep so solidly. Once I slept through an entire parade with marching bands and everything, only two houses away from my bedroom. This was probably only a digestive upset of some kind, and would soon go away.

I knew how I felt about the marriage being so one sided and selfish, and inconsiderate, and it was. It was even worse than that. But surely after almost forty years, I wasn't still angry about it. The feeling bad did not ease. It got worse. When I was awakened out of deep sleep three times in the night on Sunday, I knew what I had to do, and got out of bed, and grabbed a pink shirt to wear over my pink pajamas, and drove myself to the Emergency Room.

I considered calling from my car on the cell phone, to get ER to come out with a wheel chair, because I felt so bad, but feeling as awful as I did, was not up to dealing with a techie thing like that phone with all its buttons. I could have called one of my sons to take me, but at four in the morning they were asleep. It was only about a two mile drive, and could be hours before I'd be done there. I could do this. So wearing my comfy jameys, I did.

This time I got a better bed, not nearly as hard as the last one was, and a nurse everyone, if they have to go to ER, should be blessed with. I don't know if they're told what the patient's occupation is, but there really isn't time for shop talk there, so decided to not mention mine. The sweet young nurse would have gotten an A for everything. She didn't miss the smallest detail. But the best part was that she seemed more than glad to do all the details. When lab results were done she made sure I got them. Because some of my symptoms were red flags for heart problems, she did an EKG, and when it was fine of course, she made it celebration time in that little ER stall I was in.


The final lab test showed I have a urinary tract infection that's been blazing for days, so an IV heavy duty antibiotic was started, and more antibiotics ordered to take at home. I was surprised that it is a UTI, since I didn't show any of its symptoms, and Ive made myself a promise to never forget this, when I'm working with little old women patients who can't tell you much about how they're feeling anyway. Just because they don't show symptoms doesn't mean they don't have problems. I will get an order for lab tests for them as quickly as I can, so treatment can begin without a long wait. When I deal with the elderly again, I will try to make them feel as comfortable and good, and as safe as I did with that young nurse.

These last days have been miserable. But I'm much better now. When I don't feel like writing, when I don't have enough energy to even want to, that will my first clue it's time to be checked. As I walked from ER back to my car, I first thought I'd drive home, and change into clothes more presentable, then get the prescription filled at Wal Mart. I drove a few more blocks thinking about it, and then I did it. Parked the car as close in as I could at old WM's, and hoping I didn't get arrested, but feeling too bad to drive much farther, walked right through their front entrance doors in my pink jameys and that pink shirt I mentioned, and I got those antibiotics. Just thinking about the courage doing that took, revs me up again to work on the book.