Another Sanity Challenge

Well.  No sooner did I express my aversion to hospitals...

This morning, my mother's physical therapist called me to tell me that mother's caregiver told her that she thought my mother had a urinary tract infection.  (Did you follow that?)  Because my mother needed to repeatedly get up in the night and nobody got any sleep.

*Sigh*

I talked to my mom, but she had no clue what I was talking about.  But the evidence was there...wet sheets, wet underwear, many trips to the bathroom...

So I called her primary care physician to make an appointment, but we couldn't get in.  They suggested we go to an Urgent Care facility, but they didn't have one to recommend.

(Gee, thanks for the advice.)

I called the Hospital Emergency Room, where she had just been a few weeks earlier for her leg.  I asked, "Do you think we should go to an Urgent Care facility or to the ER?" 

"You can go anywhere you want, but if you come here (ER) we will be able to do everything that might be needed (labs, etc)."

So off to ER we went.  It was a slow afternoon, so we walked in the door and within 5 minutes we had a half dozen nurses and doctors jumping on her case.

They already had her history on the computer so the questions were pretty basic.  Then, because she really doesn't have the mental wherewithal to provide a good urine sample in order to get a clean catch, they did an "in and out" catheterization.

They sent the sample it to the hospital lab.   

Diagnosis 30 minutes later:  A bad UTI.

Within 90 minutes, we had our antibiotics and were on our way back to her Assisted Living facility.

So she only had time to ask me 10 times why we were at the ER.  LOL.

Lesson learned for us (at least when it comes to my mother)...don't waste time with Urgent Care.  For the average person with a cut or nosebleed, Urgent Care is probably just fine.   But when it comes to my mother and her issues, I doubt Urgent Care would have been able to do a catheterization nor would they have been able to get the lab results so quickly.  And if it had been something more serious, the ER could have admitted her to the hospital.

(We actually kind of learned this lesson with Buster...if it is something potentially serious, which it almost always was, don't bother with a regular vet, take him to Emergency.)

I'm home now, glad to be here, and hanging out with my husband and dogs.

I need to take advice from Jenny.

HEY, DON'T WORRY...RELAX!