Margaret’s In The Hospital

Margaret has been sick this past week and working overtime. She started being really sick Saturday night. She was so nauseous that she couldn’t eat or drink anything and by Sunday afternoon we thought she might be getting dehydrated, so off to the E.R. we went. Well, after the I.V. was started and the anti-nausea medicine got in her, she started being able to cough, except that when she did she had this strong pain on the right side of her chest. Listen to breathing and take chest x-ray – pneumonia! So they start antibiotics as well. When they put the pulse-ox (pulsox?, pull socks?) on her, the O2 level was borderline, between 88 – 92, avg about 89. Might keep her, might not. If her oxygen stays at that range and she can keep the pills down, she can go home. Well, her oxygen went down and down, all the way down to 69 at one point, but in the low 70’s otherwise, so they wound up giving her oxygen and decided to keep her overnight. So you guys pray for her, (or think nice thoughts about her or whatever it is you do…We pray) okay? Thanks.

We got there at around 2 in the afternoon and she was in a room by 9. Actually that time does not reflect the fact that she was seen relatively quickly by a doctor. In fact, I had an idea it was serious because they DID take her back right away and, in my opinion, for an E.R. they were pretty speedy, it just took that long to diagnose because her symptoms were flu-like as well, then they had to empty a bed in pulmonology.

They are going to make her take a week off from work, which is a good thing for her, if she will just stay in bed. She is the kind that has to be up and around doing, doing, doing all the time. Oh well. I will do my best to keep her behaving herself and I will try to keep you updated on Margaret’s condition and no, family members, nobody called you because it was up to me and I was too busy. I will try to have somebody call you today if I get a chance, so don’t call me up after you read this and chew me out. You know who you are.

The television was on, but muted, so every once in a while I would take a gander at what I was “missing out on” and “depriving my poor children of”(An exact quote). It helped me make a decision. Folks, I am not going to buy a TV any time soon. I also am going to have to expand my list of foes, Hollyweird (which includes the TV, movie and other media, even that sacred cow, the “news,” which some people claim is the only reason they want a TV.) and Mad Ave (in which I include the fashion industry as well the advertising game), to include the sports world as well. It used to be that professional sports figures were people you could point out to your children and say, “When you grow up, you could be the next *****, if you *****” but not so any more. I was shocked at the aggressive behavior, (well, no duh, of course I realize that aggression is a part of sports, but this behavior was much more intense and not in the line of playing the game) which was just hateful, spiteful things that 25 years ago would have been unsportsmanlike conduct! And throwing gang signs! Not to mention the advertising and of course the depiction of how glamorous alcohol is. Why don’t the booze companies have to do like the tobacco industry and advertise the truth? I saw ads all afternoon from tobacco companies telling people how to get help for quitting smoking!

Remember, the Good Book says, “Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest thou be a cursed thing like it: but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.”