This morning at 7 am, I took my mother to the emergency room. She’s had a fever and body aches for several days now and when she called the doctor, she said to bring her to the ER if her fever continued to spike or worsen because it might be meningitis. Her fever spiked, so we went.

We were in the ER from 7:30 am until 4 pm. They took blood tests, chest x-rays and a whole host of other fun things, but basically they wanted to see if they could find out what it was since the only things they could do to definitively rule out meningitis were a CAT scan and a spinal tap. They gave her an IV of sodium chloride and pumped her full of 3 liters of the stuff to rehydrate her since the fever ended up depleting her fluids quite a bit.

It was a long long day sitting there in the room (we got a room, thankfully. The early bird gets the room, I guess), waiting, hearing a crazy old woman in bed 4 screaming, “Get me the hell outta here!!!” over and over again between doses of sedative. My mom slept a little, but I was unable to. So I played Tetris on my cell phone, tried to read a little, and otherwise just zoned out and lost myself in my thoughts.

When the blood tests came back, the only elevated “levels” were her white blood cells. With that information and her symptoms, the doctor determined that it was a severe version of a viral illness - the flu - and not meningitis. The treatment? Bed rest, plenty of fluids and Motrin for the pain. He asked my mom if she wanted the spinal tap, but she declined… after asking the doctor if he thought it was necessary. He said, “Would I recommend it for a family member in this case? No. I think this is definitely viral and NOT meningitis.” No spinal tap for mom, which is good since that’s a painful procedure.

We got home, ordered some Chinese food since we were both ravenous, and then I napped for an hour before getting up to drive to the airport to pick up my sister. I waited for a nice long time while she was getting through customs and finally saw her walking down the international arrivals hallway… and then I woke up a little. This was a good thing since I also had to drive home at that point and it was after 10:00. I sped, though not dangerously… and we got home around 10:25. She wanted to show us some things and tell us some stories, so I stayed awake for a bit, but bowed out when I saw the clock turn over to 11:00.

It’s time for me to get to bed. I have work tomorrow, after all.