Where's your blood?

ERs are always strange but never more strange than at 4:00 AM. There always seem to be the same guy polishing the floor no matter what city no matter what floor. They made us sit outside while they wired my mom up, but after two minutes they called me in because they couldn't understand her; they thought she was "drifting". It took me a few minutes to get them to believe that her mind was fine, it was just her slurred "strokey" speech.

Anyway it's hours of sitting and waiting, and tests and worried looks. And finally some doctor told me she'd need a transfusion because she was anemic and had severe  blood loss for some reason. As a kid I'd always thought that it was some kind of complicated procedure usually involving a mad doctor and people changing personalities. Really it just means they hang bags of blood in your IV. 

A really calm, nice nurse named Doug walked us through the process which has surprsingly few possible complications. They give Bendadryl in case there's an allergic reaction; Benadryl really can be used for everything. It's very strange looking at a big bag of blood looping around and going into your mother's arm. It looked like a big Red Vine.

So of course we sat there for hours while more doctors came in. Her night doctor came in and,, he he was very good but he was also being interrupted every 2 minutes by pages so it was hard to give him information. I had to keep making him and every new doctor, nurse and technician clear her odd speach was just from her stroke 12 years ago and not somethning new. 

She had the morphine so she was calm. I was a basket case. I cam down to take care of my parents and I'd broken my mom. My dad mostly hid out in the waiting room which is good because he has some of that poopy old man smell wafting around(a battle for a different day). I was getting horror stories of kidney failure(which I fortunately knew from my own issues a few years ago is really a temporary condition), absesses, annd on and on. Everything is so fluid when you're in those first stages you can never really know what the real situation is.

The biggest issue was that she takes cumadin for blood thinning and she had a whoppingly  huge amount of it in her system. This remained a myster for several days.

We were finally ready to be admitted. On her way up Doug, the nurse turned to me and told me "I didn't want to say anything in front of your parents but they usually call me in on a case when things look really bad. Turns out things look a little better than usual."

(to be continued)