Retirement age is fun and full of adventures!

Here is the story. 
Monday Aug 24, I got up about 5AM to take a young Brazilian women to the hospital for a laparoscopy. She doesn't have her family here so I was her "mother" for the operation. When she was able to leave I took her home, went to get Rx's, dropped them off and picked up Merlin for his doctor appointment. He had been having lots of pain in his back and has been throwing up periodically for several weeks. It actually took me 2 months to get him to agree to go to the doctor.

We got to the doctor but before we saw him, Merlin told me he thought he might have an UTI.  We told the nurse and she tested for a UTI. Then we saw the doctor. Merlin told him the several complaints; the doctor ran an EKG, said his EKG was fine.  The doctor said he was probably anxious about retiring. The doctor would send his sample to the lab for culture and get back to him. Then he told Merlin to come back to see him after he retired and then we left. I was feeling very uneasy about the doctor's evaluation.

We had to visit our daughter-in-law's mother in the hospital, who had a pacemaker replaced. This was about 3PM and I had not eaten since 7AM. I was getting pretty hungry so we were going out to eat after the visit with Sharon, the pacemaker woman.

So we left there about 4PM to go eat. On the way, Merlin had to stop and throw up on the side of the road. Sheesh! He said he wanted to go home and rest. I said he should not go to work the next day. Of course he said he was going to work. I dropped him off at home and went shopping for the lunches I make for his 3 day driving route.  I put together a very nice food package for him for the three days he is off driving the semi loaded with Cargill Meats to 4 states.

I called our son Scott to see if I was being overly concerned because our doctor was taking his symptoms lightly. Scott is a physician. Scott said we need to find another doctor. OK. Then Merlin called me and said he was really miserable and needed to go to the ER.
So, there I am at Target, also I'm out of gas, AND worried about Merlin. I called Scott back and told him we were on the way to the ER. Of course I messed up trying to fill the gas tank and had to do the credit card stuff all over again.

I picked up Merlin and arrived at the ER at 5:30PM. We got right in. Scott came a few minutes later. They gave Merlin morphine for the pain. . . two shots. Still I had not eaten (it's always about me). Scott and I sat with Merlin for moral support, waiting for the tests to come back. Merlin was doing just fine on his two shots of morphine.  Finally, at 9:30PM Scott and I went to the cafeteria to get some dinner. They have the best cafeteria in the world.  A food critic should go there. When we got back, Merlin was in a nicely drugged sleep, finally out of pain. By that time the doctor felt Merlin had a kidney stone.

They were going to run some kind of scan that needed dye, which takes some time to assimilate. Scott was comfortable with the kidney stone diagnosis so he left about 10PM. Merlin had to drink a lot of dye stuff, that tasted like Crystal Light, over a hour and a half time period. I helped him keep up on his drinking schedule.

Now here is the funny part. The technician came to take Merlin for the scan at about 12midnight. As he was getting the bed ready to move Merlin, I asked if Merlin could walk to the test site! Merlin of course said he could. (In his drugged state he could do anything.) The tech guy said sure he could walk. So off they go, Merlin trying to keep his privacy as much as possible wearing one of those hospital gowns. As soon as they were gone I jumped into Merlin's bed and went to sleep! When Merlin came back, he was not surprised at all that I was sleeping in his bed! Make the real patient walk to his test so I could sleep. It's so about me!
Since then we have an urologist for Merlin so he doesn't always have to go to the ER, and he is feeling much better.