Our house guest, whom I shall not name in this blog because he likes his privacy but whom many of you reading this may already know, arrived back at our house Thursday night. Mark and I had gone out to the Solivita movie, and he was here when we got home. He had a good time on the west coast, but he decided he did not want to rent the house he saw. He did not think it was in very good shape.
Friday morning we had a leisurely time in the kitchen for breakfast, then Mark and I went up to the gym to do our weight routines. When we got back, we all went to Boggy Creek Airboat Rides for the 30 minute ride and opportunity to hold the baby gator, Poseidon. Our driver was great and gave us a FORTY minute ride. It was also freezing cold and gray out. The baby alligator holding went well, and we bought a picture of me holding it AGAIN and one of our houseguest holding it. These will go up on my powder room wall as I attempt to fill the wall with all of my friends and relatives holding an alligator. Crazy idea, I know.
Then the day started to take a turn for the worse, a BIG turn for the worse for our houseguest especially.
We had taken two cars to the airboat ride so that we could split up for the afternoon. Our cleaning team comes every other Friday and prefers that we be out of the house. Yesterday was their day, so Mark and I had no trouble staying out of the house. As always, we volunteer at the ANRL Library at the Cove between 1 and 4. We headed over to Cheeks for lunch and then to the library. After putting in our hours, we stopped at Publix for a few things and got home about 4:45.
Then things went very, very far south for our guest.
The first inkling that he was having a bad day came from a text he sent us as we were driving home from Publix. He had left the airboat and gone into Kissimmee for a bar-be-que- lunch and then to Wal Mart for shopping. We thought he had gone to our local Wal Mart, but we were actually thrilled later to learn he was at a Wal Mart over thirty minutes away, sent by his GPS because he was up in the heart of Kissimmee.
The first text said he couldn't find his car in the parking lot. Well, not uncommon and in a large, unfamiliar parking lot. A few minutes later, the second text said he had the Wal Mart security guard driving around looking for it and SHE didn't find it. Then we started to panic that his relatively new, out of state licensed, Honda Accord was stolen. Accords are a very commonly stolen car. We now believed it had been stolen and offered to come get him and/or help look. Honestly, we were sure we were going to be driving him to the police station. Then his next text said that he found it. OK, one down.
He got home, much later than we expected because he wasn't at the local Wal Mart, and brought the picture frames I wanted him to buy for me for the alligator pictures. I couldn't figure out how to open the backs of two of them. He also bought one special frame for his picture, which was one of the ones I couldn't open. He sat and worked on them while we made dinner. Then later I noticed his picture was in a frame, but NOT the frame he bought special for it. When I asked him about it, he said he didn't do it. Well, Mark and I didn't do it either. Clearly, he did not remember doing it. He switched it and remarked that he didn't understand how he could have done that.
Then as he sat down to dinner he said he was having some discomfort on urination. Whoa! It sounded like he had a possible UTI, which was disconcerting since that's what Mark just had two weeks ago. He had dinner and went to bed to rest. At 10 p.m. he announced he was going to the ER.
This particular houseguest often has various ailments that send him to the ER, real and imagined, so we were not particularly surprised. We did not offer to go with him. On hindsight, I feel bad about this and wish we had gone.
He went across the street to the local hospital and was seen within 40 minutes of arriving. I started receiving text messages from him from then until about 1:20 a.m. when Mark got out of bed and went over to the hospital to stay with him. He was saying he was feeling very sad and lonely over there all by himself. Sure enough, he had a raging UTI that had already progressed to a kidney infection. He spiked a fever of 103 while in the ER. YIKES! Very real problem this time.
Interestingly enough, it explains the disorientation from earlier today. Mark read that kidney infections can cause this sort of memory loss and behavioral issues. So that's why he couldn't find his car or remember putting the picture in the wrong frame. I'm sure the infection was setting in all day and then spiked at night.
So he had IV antibiotics at the hospital and came home at 3:20 a.m. with three prescriptions. Mark and I just got back from the pharmacy with them, one of which is Cipro. So now we get to live with another week of juggling dairy foods around the pill schedule. Big pain in the you-know-what! But he's allergic to penicillin and sulfa drugs anyway, and Cipro seems to be the drug-of-choice for UTIs.
What a visit!
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